
Pass "BTlgLk-L 
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THE PROBLEMS OF MEDIUMSHIP 



Explanation of the Chart. 

The Miniature Universe of Earth. 



A— THE MATERIAL BALL OF THE EARTH. This turns on its 
axis daily. 

B— THE SPIRIT SPHERES in the Higher Polarity. The blue and 
rose-red are larger than the yellow because our Planet is not yet 
dominated by pure spirit 

These Spirit Spheres do not turn with the Earth Ball as it turns 
daily on its own axis. They are stationary spheres. 

C C— THIN RING OF THE SPIRITUALISED ELEMENTS that enclose 
C the whole Earth Universe in an envelope of spiritual protection 

C of its integrity as an individual Planet. 

C At the region nearest the Sun this thin ring of the Spheres 

can be entered from Earth life if the Elemental Astral Plane is 

crossed. 

D— THE DARK SEA OF DEATH. Extreme negative condition. 

1— THE EARTH REGION OF MATERIAL LIFE. 

2— THE REGION WHERE MANY EARTH-BOUND SPIRITS 
DWELL. Many lands are found in this Earth Plane. Some 
bright, some dark, and of all stages of progression. 

This region forms the barrier against the encroachment of the 
Elemental Astral Plane upon the Earth. 

3— SEMI-ASTRAL SEMI-PHYSICAL region of the Elemental Astral 
Plane. Mental development brings affiliation to this region, and 
from it to the Astral Planes shown as No. 4- 

4— ASTRAL PLANE OF THE EARTH. In this region the Astral 
Element predominates. It is not in a pure state, but produces 
very striking effects in conjunction with man's astral body of the" 
Elemental Plane. 

5— THE WHITE CRESCENT of pure Astral Element— all that is left 
of it now. This is the Frozen Land of Death. The Gate of Death 
is the only exit from it and into the Dark Sea. 

6 — BLACK CONE or tree stump of the Serpent Men. — Where they live. 

7 — Spirals of Mist that travel round the Black Cone and form THE 
MIRROR OF ILLUSIONS. 

This Mirror is reflected on to the Earth Plane upper regions 
(No. 3), and reproduces its illusions there. 

The whole enclosed in its ring of Spiritualised Elements forms the 
Miniature Universe of the Planet Earth. 



THE PROBLEMS 
OF MEDIUMSHIP 



By 

ALLESSANDRO ZYMONIDAS 



LONDON: KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, 
TRUBNER & CO., LIMITED, BROADWAY 
HOUSE, 68-74, CARTER LANE, E.C. 
NEW YORK : E. P. DUTTON & CO. 

1920 



^ 



V 



\P A/ 



2 oins 



PRTNTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY KING AND HUTCHINGS, LTD. 
HILLINGDON PRESS, UXBRIDGE, MIDDLESEX 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER I. page 

The Great Universe and The Trinity in 

Unity 1 

CHAPTER II. 

The Origin of the Earth 31 

CHAPTER III. 

The Astral World : Its Ending 47 

CHAPTER IV. 

Pre-natal Stage of the Earth awaiting 
its Rebirth into Matter : The Law 
of Polarity and the Law of Sex ... 67 

CHAPTER V. 

The Evolution of the Four Elements : 

The Spirits of these Elements ... 80 

CHAPTER VI. 

The Earth as a Miniature Universe : 
The Contrasting Differences between 
the Earth and the Great Universe 88 

CHAPTER VII. 

The Anatomy of the Earth : Its Various 

Realms and Spheres 101 

CHAPTER VIII. 

The Elemental - astral Plane : The 

Serpent's Realm 112 

CHAPTER IX. 

Astral Spirits: The Masters and their 

Powers of Projection... 129 



vi CONTENTS — continued 

CHAPTER X. page 

The Evolution of Man's Body through 
Matter : The Soul of Man was never 
in that Matter 146 

CHAPTER XL 

The Story of Eden : Why the Soul of 

Man was United to Matter 159 

CHAPTER XII. 

Development on Mental Lines of 
Mediumship. Its Relation to the 
Elemental-astral Plane. The Astral 
Mirror of that Plane. The Relation 
of Clairvoyance and Clairaudience 
to this Plane. True Mediumship and 
that which is only the effects 
of Vampirism : Dangers of Develop- 
ment ON CERTAIN LlNES 176 

CHAPTER XIII. 

Vibration, in its Relations to the Grey 
Land and the Kingdom of the Serpent- 
men 205 

CHAPTER XIV. 

What Clairvoyance shows of the Psychic 
Aspects of the East : Elemental Types 
Created by Man : Abnormal Evolution 
and its Results in the East 214 

CHAPTER XV. 

The Relation of the Elemental Plane 
to Mediumship : The Possibilities for 
Greater Intercourse in the Near 
Future ... ... 233 



PREFACE 

This book, and the following books of this series, 
are written for persons who, having satisfied their 
minds that man has a soul that survives the death 
of the body, desire to hold communion with the 
spirit world, and are attracted by the many 
alluring possibilities which the various schools of 
psychic thought and occult wisdom hold out to the 
students who join them. 

These books are not written to kill what is true 
and valuable in the teachings of Spiritualism, nor 
to destroy the hope of holding communion with 
the departed that is so comforting to the bereaved. 
The books are written to show what is false and 
misleading in many of the alluring paths to psychic 
powers, and how truth may be found instead of 
error. They are written to show the real nature 
of the plane that intervenes between man on earth 
and the spirit world of realities, and how and 
why, in allowing himself to become entangled 
in the network of illusions, he loses those realities ; 
also what is the origin of the difficulties he 
encounters and the disappointments he meets, 
even when good conditions for communication are 
given. 

These books do not enter into the questions as 
to whether immortality has been fully established 

vii 



viii PREFACE 

as an eternal verity, nor whether there is a spirit 
world man can hold converse with, but begin at 
the point where psychics find themselves con- 
fronted by a variety of paths to the attainment of 
occult powers, and desire to know what is the 
origin and source of the teachings that will direct 
their progress on one or other of those pathways. 

Especially do these books deal with the source 
of the power, and the real objects sought by those 
inspirers of the occult schools that adopt the 
serpent as their symbol ; for all through the lapse 
of ages the corrupting influence of that line may 
be traced in one religion after another, and one 
school of occultism after another ; and always 
with disastrous results as the ultimate outcome 
of those teachings. 

All psychic associations to-day are so permeated 
with the teachings of the Orientals and the old 
occult schools of the Middle Ages in Europe that 
the dominant note in them all is this quasi-Oriental, 
Christian mystic, magical and semi-scientific com- 
bination, and to amalgamate with one school is 
to find a measure of affiliation to them all ; hence, 
to disentangle the truths from the falsehoods of 
that polyglot mixture is a Herculean task. This 
book is primarily devoted to the study of the 
psychic evolution of our planet and the origin of 
the elemental plane and its conditions, because it 
is in those conditions the entanglement begins. 

The records of the older Western schools of 
occultism and magical pow r ers are made easily 



PREFACE ix 

accessible by the numerous books that have been 
published, since Spiritualism began, dealing with 
those psychic associations ; and the OrientaL 
teachers who give their formulas for attaining 
wisdom and power are now quite numerous, 
although Oriental occultism originated with a small 
group of men, and has gradually spread every- 
where that a loophole for their teachings could be 
made. 

It would, however, be unjust to the people of 
the Orient to say these men are really representative 
of the desire of the East to proselytise among the 
Western nations. By far the greater number of 
the Eastern races have nothing to do with the 
occult propaganda, and regard the Western races 
as " unbelievers," outside the pale of interest 
so far as their religious opinions are concerned. 

The alluring and beautiful aspects of the Oriental 
religions must be fully recognised by every one, and 
still it must be pointed out that every religion or 
philosophy representative of the highly-civilised 
races possesses similar beautiful truths, and also 
embodies them in picturesque and poetic language. 

Those who are acquainted with the Greek and 
Roman writers, upon whose ideals Western thought 
has been largely built up, or with the wealth of 
imagery of the Jewish chroniclers and the exalted 
visioning of the early Christian mystics and their 
school of literature, know that the beautiiul 
truths enshrined in them all are of universal origin, 
and belong to no age, no race, no religion or 



x PREFACE 

philosophy, but are the property of the whole 
universe and its myriad worlds as an eternal 
heritage. 

Wherefore, when we find these truths translated 
into the language of the Brahmins, Buddhists, 
Egyptians, or other races whose mystical religions 
have influenced thought, these truths may seem 
to acquire thereby an attractive air of novelty 
and mystery, from the strangeness of the language 
in which they are expressed, and their unfamiliar 
aspect when presented through a different type of 
mentality ; but those truths are, in reality, neither 
more illuminating nor more profound when pre- 
sented in these semi-comprehensible terms than as 
given in the familiar language of everyday Western 
races. 

There is, in fact, no reason why the very 
attractive guise in which the wealth of imagery 
and poetic beauty that distinguish the Oriental 
writers, should make any logically-minded person 
blind to the obvious errors and dangerous 
perversions of the beautiful truths of which some 
of those accomplished writers are guilty when they 
incorporate with the truth certain very dangerous 
psychic teachings, false doctrines, and distortions 
of the truth, together with formulas for the 
development of psychic powers that are altogether 
misleading and evil in their effects ; derived not 
from the Divine Inspirer of truth, but from the 
dangerous and deceiving spirits who have in all 
ages contrived to thrust their poisonous seeds of 



PREFACE xi 

occult wisdom into the most beautiful of religious 
doctrines. 

The author of this book asserts that certain of 
these very dangerous errors are incorporated in 
the teachings of all the old " mystery " religions, 
and are being reproduced to-day by the Oriental 
teachers and by those who seek their knowledge 
among the archives of the occultisms of the semi- 
scientific non-religious associations of the Western 
psychics of the past eras. 

There is no religious prejudice behind this 
assertion ; the original author* of this series of 
books was a man of wide sympathies and a free- 
thinker in the best sense of that term, who began 
life with a strong prepossession in favour of the 
old mystical religions, with their wonderful power 
on the occult planes. 

The Elemental-astral Plane is made the subject of 
this book, because it cannot be ignored by the 
psychic. Man enters upon a quicksand when he 
affiliates to it, and can rely on nothing that is 
seen on it, for thought there assumes the guise 
of reality, yet cannot possess it. The error against 
which this book is a protest is the error of the whole 
system by which the student is put into affiliation 
to it at all. 

The sole reason we write against the good men 
among the Oriental teachers (they are not all good 
men, though some are) is that they are themselves 
the victims of their false line of development, 

* See Note at end of Preface. 



xii PREFACE 

and can only lead their pupils astray also. Their 
age-old system makes of the beautiful gifts of the 
spirit — clairvoyance, clairaudience, and mental 
mediumship — a snare, because developed into the 
illusionary conditions of that plane instead of into 
affiliation to the true spirit sphere ; and at death 
the victims of these errors are left imprisoned on 
that plane to which they have established affiliation 
by that system of development. 

If is of no use to appeal to this or that psychic, 
who sees the " Masters " or the deities of the 
Oriental faiths ; nor to the Mystics of the semi- 
Oriental, semi-European schools of occultism of 
more recent origin. 

These seers have concentrated their whole power 
of vision on that plane in mistake for the spirit 
world, and cannot see anything but that wonder- 
land of illusions. These seers behold their visions 
in the astral light of that plane, and by no other 
light. It is a false light, in itself a mere reflection. 
What is seen is thrown off from the minds of the 
powerful intelligences on that plane, with many 
added thought creations from earth minds. 

If these seers could go beyond that plane, they 
would perceive the whole transparent illusion. 

So many spiritualists and psychics in general 
have developed that type of clairvoyance it is 
difficult to make people realise the nature of the 
mistake that has been made by the old occultisms 
in practising formulas that lead to the quicksand 
region, and nowhere else. 



PREFACE xiii 

The misfortune is that a mass of good persons, 
adhering to an error, or a thing evil in its effects, 
give it life and act as a living wall that protects it 
against exposure. It would be well if good persons 
would sometimes allow suspicion to invade the 
serene confidence of their pleasant mental enjoy- 
ment of their power of visioning fair things, and 
their trust in the teachers whose real powers they 
cannot test except by the apparent results of suc- 
cessful development of much visioning. 

When death has separated these persons from 
the protection of their earth bodies, a great many 
have already found too late the nature of the 
mistake they have made. 

It is not a question, then, of choice, nor of moral 
or immoral desires, nor of reward or punishment, 
but of the automatic operation of a nature law 
that causes the astral body they have redeveloped 
to be drawn on to that plane to which it is affiliated, 
and on which alone the ego can now live. 

These statements are the result of many com- 
munications from spirits, as well as from experiences 
of mediums in the flesh, and are not made in haste, 
nor lightly. More than seventy years have elapsed 
since the first members of the little coterie — some 
of whose researches this book embodies — began 
their study of the mystic planes and magnetic 
forces, before the period of the Rochester knockings. 

To the original circle others of a younger gener- 
ation were added, who carried on .the study 
quietly and with no intention of assuming the 



xiv PREFACE 

position of critics of others' teachings till the 
position was forced on them by the discoveries 
they made in relation to the spirit side of life, and 
its material correspondence with mediumship. 

It would be a far pleasanter task to simply 
record the results of the investigations of the little 
circle and the theories developed by them ; omit- 
ting all adverse criticism of other individuals. 
Universal toleration for the ideas and the teachings 
of others would suggest refraining from any direct 
attack on what to the author appeared as dangerous, 
and even fatal, errors in the teachings of the Oriental 
schools. It has been said that Western races are 
prone to attack the religions and religious practices 
of other peoples, and even to exercise a perpetual 
restless criticism of their own faiths, whereas the 
Orientals refrain from such discourteous treatment 
of the beliefs of others, and show a deep respect 
for their own faiths. 

Now, if the question were simply one of extending 
universal toleration for the opinions and religious 
practices of those who differ from ourselves, and 
if such silent toleration of erroneous opinions and 
practices affected only those individuals who held 
those opinions and followed those practices, it 
would be quite just to say that criticisms and attacks 
on the religious, or political, or social ideals and 
practices of others are discourteous infringements 
upon their individual liberty. 

But, as a matter of fact, the opinions held by 
any body of individualities, and the actions that 



PREFACE xv 

are the outcome of those opinions, affect not only 
the individuals themselves, but the whole com- 
munity, and, finally, the world at large, because 
the world has been, and is being, moulded into its 
permanent future form now by its inhabitants, and 
will possess hereafter the character, as a world, 
which the races of men who evolved on it developed. 

Moreover, even in the immediate present and 
the near future, the lives and the safety and the 
liberty of the whole community of any world is 
menaced or benefited by the degree to which 
truth or error prevails ; for no man can live for 
himself alone. Wrong ideas, false doctrines, prac- 
tices that lead to evils and breed them, the sowing 
of disease in minds and in bodies, do not end 
with the individual, but become powerful to 
affect many lives through the wrong actions of one 
thinker who goes astray, or one individual w 7 ho 
indulges in immorality. 

All evils and all errors are as weeds that bring 
forth the seeds of other weeds, and that multiply 
and extend their zone of influence far and wide, 
and, spreading over the whole land, use up the 
vital force that should grow flowers of truth and 
virtue. Weeds grow far faster than flowers ; 
weeds flourish and spread in the poorest of soil, 
where flowers die for lack of sustenance ; and the 
spreading weeds will soak up all the vital essence in 
the soil around them, and overrun the borders 
where the flowers are planted, enveloping the 
flowers and choking their growth, and, finally. 



xvi PREFACE 

killing them. So that the weeds at last reign alone 
over all that part of the earth where their seeds 
were scattered by evil or careless hands, and left 
by supine minds to germinate and flourish till 
they had reduced that land to the conditions of 
a wilderness of weeds, wherein no flowers of truth 
have any more a chance to grow and blossom. 

If throughout the ages all reformers, all clear- 
sighted men and women, all who could discern 
truth as distinct from the specious and plausible 
lie, had stood aside in amiable toleration for all the 
evils that have corrupted the world, that world 
would by now have retrogressed back far behind 
its original starting-point, into a condition of moral 
and intellectual darkness and of horrors unspeak- 
able. Only by the persistent fight against error 
and evil, wherever met, has the world been preserved 
from that fate and evolved into even its present 
imperfect condition of good balancing evil and 
making a certain measure of progress possible for 
the peoples. 

It requires courage, both moral and physical 
courage, to challenge some popular fallacy and 
expose an accepted but corrupting doctrine, or 
to fight against the stream of public opinion when 
it has set in a particular direction, or to criticise 
adversely some venerated teacher. The mild 
tolerance that prefers to stand aside from the battle 
is far the easiest attitude to assume, and the most 
comfortable; but it is in its essence a cowardly 
attitude, however much it may appeal at first to 



PREFACE xvii 

that love of freedom of thought and of action for 
all which it is intended to express. 

We may be tolerant of evil because we are quite 
indifferent to its results, so long as we ourselves 
are not affected by them. Many persons have no 
very active convictions on any subject, and can 
feel tolerant to all without an effort, because their 
minds are almost a blank in regard to those 
questions. 

Intolerance is the forcing upon others the course 
of action, or the line of thought that appears right 
for ourselves, even the forcing on others of moral 
laws they do not choose to observe. So long as an 
individual harms only himself by his thoughts and 
actions, he has the right to do wrong if he elects 
to ; he has the right to go even to the lowest hell 
if he so desires ; but when the wrong thought 
or the evil action affects even one other member of 
the human family, the community possesses a 
logical right to coerce and restrain the individual 
who thus harms his neighbours, and to restrict 
his liberty to do wrong for himself and others. 

Man is put on earth between the two conflicting 
influences of good and of evil in order to evolve for 
himself a character in which the good or the evil 
shall prevail, and to fix which condition in the next 
stage of life he is to occupy. Freedom of choice is 
always his, but those who have travelled the road 
before him, and who know all the pitfalls and 
quagmires and illusions he will meet with, have laid 
on them the burden of warning those who are 



xviii PREFACE 

following, and then they should stand aside while 
the individual makes his own choice as to which 
path he will take. 

No one may ask, " Am I my brother's keeper? ' 
All are the guardians of those who are more 
ignorant, less clear of sight, less ripe as spirits. 

The watchman on the tower is set there to be the 
herald of the approaching danger to those who are 
working and not watching. The watchman is not 
there to chronicle the pleasant things of daily life 
he sees spread out before him in a fair panorama 
of beauty. He wastes his time if he allows those 
fair things to attract his notice and beguile him 
from his watch for the danger signals. 

Wherefore it is that the watchman is always 
the herald of evils, the one w r ho cries the warning 
words into the ears of the careless, and happy 
when no danger can be discerned from a lower 
altitude than the watchtower ; and, therefore, 
it is that the world which likes pleasant things, 
and to be left in peaceful enjoyment of them, is 
so slow to take alarm when the pioneers of the 
community give the signal of the danger approach- 
ing, and that so often are the great mass of people 
overwhelmed in the catastrophe, despite the 
existence of the watchmen on their outposts in 
the wilderness or on the city walls. 

Never yet has a*' world-change " come without 
these warnings, and never will there fail to be people 
who refuse to see a danger till it has engulfed them. 

All reformations have been at times when great 



PREFACE xix 

changes were due upon the earth, and always to the 
bold souls, who were steadfast in their fight against 
evil, has it been due that a remnant has come out 
of the cyclone of destruction and remained to 
found a new line of evolution upon the ruins of 
the old. 

So far from it being a merit to practise a wide 
toleration of all of the good or of the evil things, 
it becomes a sin when by that toleration a multitude 
are lost who might have been given the choice of 
paths and warned of what was evil and dangerous. 

In the sense of there being a moral responsibility 
resting upon each one — mortal in the flesh or 
discarnate spirit alike — in relation to his neighbours, 
and in the special responsibility to warn that 
rests upon anyone who knows that a certain path 
or a certain line of psychic development ends only 
in a dark gulf, a moral quagmire, that cannot be 
escaped if the road is followed beyond a certain 
point, it may trufy be said that each man is his 
brother's keeper, and none by excessive tolerance 
or philosophic indifference may escape that 
responsibility. 

In relation to this book, and to the assertions 
that will be made later on in its sequel concerning 
the effects upon the spiritual evolution of the soul 
of man that result from following out certain lines 
of psychic development, it must be stated here that 
the original members of the coterie, among whom 
this book and its companion volumes may be said 
to have been born, are all on the other side of life 



xx PREFACE 

now, and have reaped in their own persons the 
fruits of the paths they followed on earth. They 
speak from knowledge, not from theoretical 
argument. 

Much of the information that has come from 
them, to those members of the circle who now 7 
represent their line of labours, has been held in 
abeyance till the fullest confirmation had been 
obtained by the earthly friends. The testimony 
of a father, a brother, a friend, and co-worker in 
the field of mediumship carries with it a special 
value, because the identity of the communicating 
spirit being known there is at once confidence 
felt in his honour and his knowledge. 

In many cases years elapsed before the spirit 
friend could communicate — various reasons were 
given for this — in other cases the return and the 
message given were very prompt. Where actual 
return in tangible form was not possible there were 
communications through intermediate sources, 
sometimes through stranger mediums not previously 
known to the circle ; and there was the trans- 
mission of messages, through the mental medium- 
ship of one or two of the survivors. 

A spirit arriving in the next sphere is very like 
a man arriving from a long, hard journey, and re- 
quires a rest and to acclimatise himself to his new 
conditions before taking up the burden of active 
existence again. 

A- spirit, on the other hand, who is only on the 
earth plane, and consequently within the elemental 



PREFACE xxi 

astral envelope of the Earth, is like a man who puts 
off his outer garment and lives henceforth in the 
more attenuated envelope of the most material 
astral elemental condition that is described as 
" earth-bound." The process is so simple that 
some spirits hardly lose consciousness in thus 
freeing themselves from the mortal form. These 
spirits can very readily and very soon communicate. 

The mistake they often make is in believing they 
are truly discarnate spirits. They are not ; they 
are spirits who are only in a finer earth form. 
These cannot give true pictures of the real spirit 
world — only of their own section of the elemental 
plane. 

These earth-bound spirits are the workers on 
their plane when they are conscious and active. 
Some are, however, quite unconscious and in a 
state akin to sleep. 

When the older members of the small group 
of students, whose experiences gave the first 
foundations for this book, passed into spirit life 
they made various discoveries as to its conditions 
and their own, and those nearest the Earth and in 
the Elemental-astral Plane have done much to 
assist in showing its true conditions, and in 
explaining the nature and origin of some of those 
unfortunate experiences of which nearly all 
psychics have had painful cognisance. 

The story of the astral era of our Earth's evolution 
came from another source, and was given many 
years ago. All that relates to the astral body 



xxii PREFACE 

and the astral world, with the ending of that era 
and the evolution of the earth planet into material 
objectivity, the study of the conditions of the 
elemental- astral planes and the source of the power 
of the adepts, was given by a spirit who claimed to 
have been one of the masters of magic in the past. 
He gave certain particulars as to his life-story 
and identity that proved correct. 

He stated that the publication of his manuscript 
would be an atonement on his part for his share 
in propagating some of the errors he now desired to 
expose, and that other ancient spirits are also 
seeking to undo their errors or misdeeds by helping 
the cause of true knowledge. 

Nothing but good has ever resulted from the 
controlling influence of this spirit, only help and 
protection have been the result of reposing con- 
fidence in him, and more than one psychic has found 
that through his warnings and by his help the 
pitfalls and entanglements of the Astral-elemental 
Plane were avoided. These books are published as 
a tribute to his labours on behalf of mankind, 
as well as an attempt to make those labours 
fruitful in saving many psychic persons who are 
rushing into danger to-day. 

Very many years ago, before Theosophy began 
to expound its teachings concerning the astral 
plane and the astral body, this old spirit gave his 
teachings on all those subjects, but his manuscript 
seemed too strange and too impossible to find 
acceptance and publication. It was not till more 



PREFACE xxiii 

recent years that the truth in that old manuscript 
became apparent, and was made the foundation 
upon which this and the succeeding volumes are 
built up. The relation between all those conditions 
of the astral era and our present Earth, as traced 
out in the manuscript by the old spirit, were found 
to be correct when tested by experiments and 
experiences. These books have been kept back for 
years while investigations were being carried on, 
and not, indeed, till the friends here discovered 
for themselves, through independent sources, the 
truths that lay buried in the old manuscript, was 
there an opportunity for publishing it in this revised 
form. 

By that time the old spirit came no more to show 
his psychic the wonders of the astral world and 
the astral plane, but other manuscripts in which 
those wonders were recorded remain, and are avail- 
able for far more extensive explanations of the 
subject than are given in this volume. 

The whole line of studies these books represent 
was an honest attempt to obtain knowledge by 
independent experiments. These volumes will 
not contain borrowings or appropriations from the 
labour ; of any other psychics. Nothing is given 
that has not come direct to the seers. Experiences 
that will be referred to in the later volumes are 
taken from actual cases ; nothing is asserted that 
has not been carefully revised and tested to prove 
whether it came from a true or a false source of 
information on either side of life. In giving the 



xxiv PREFACE 

account of the Astral Era, and its consequences 
to the people of the Physical Era, the teachings of 
the old spirit are given unaltered, although a little 
abbreviated. 

To write a book making assertions that from 
their very nature, as relating to the subtle unseen 
forces of the universe, and the use made of them by 
spirits and by " Masters " in the flesh, cannot be 
proved before a jury, will carry little weight with 
the world ; but if those who read these books can, 
from their own experiences, recognise the sign- 
posts of danger given therein ; or can accept the 
explanations of the vague, half-recognised con- 
sciousness of evil and of danger which many 
psychic students have, but hardly like to heed till 
some one else gives voice to them ; or if they can 
corroborate the truth of the theories advanced 
in explanation of those things of doubtful import 
that they have experienced ; or can accept as 
logical the solutions given as throwing light upon 
the vexed problems of psychic development, 
great support is given to the cause of truth by 
their independent testimony. 

It is hoped that a large number of persons can 
testify to the truth contained in these books, and 
in that hope the books are sent forth to meet the 
opposition and the criticisms that must be expected 
where the statements conflict with the theories 
and teachings of the Oriental and kindred schools 
of occult thought that are now so dominant an 
influence in the psychic world. 



PREFACE 



xx^ 



Great is, however, the power of Truth. In 
the name of God. may the truth in these books 
prevail and carry conviction to those who read 
them with an open mind. 



NOTE AS TO AUTHORSHIP OF THIS BOOK. 

The original author of these books was a Venetian Jew. He 
travelled much, studied many subjects, practised medicine as 
a profession, and made music his recreation. He was a man of 
wide experience and broad sympathies, but did not identify 
himself with any special line of religious or philosophic thought. 

He died very suddenly, leaving an enormous mass of manu- 
scripts that represent his life-work in regard to investigations 
oil the occult planes, to be published by his friends as his last 
request. 

There are materials grouped into books, but not prepared 
for publication, as well as a quantity of manuscripts, that are 
intended to supply the materials for replies to the criticisms 
and contradictions his theories will encounter. 

To give his identity w T ould not help the books. A great name 
is a powerful introduction, but, after all, every book must make 
its own appeal to the individual judgment of each mind, and the 
fact that the author is not here to accept the personal 
responsibility for the books as presented now by others, who have 
had to, practically, rewrite them from his materials, makes it 
unfair even to him to call the book his alone. 

The value of the materials he left in manuscript, and the light 
they throw on the vexed problems of psychic control, fully 
justifies their publication. 



The Problems of Mediumship 



CHAPTER I 



INTRODUCTORY 



THE GREAT UNIVERSE AND THE TRINITY IN 
UNITY 

In order to understand the psychic evolution of 
our planet — Earth — it is necessary to study, first 
of all, the evolution of the Universe, of which our 
Earth forms so minute a part, because our planet 
is a miniature universe in itself, and possesses some 
portion of every element found in the Great 
Universe that stretches away in boundless mag- 
nificence far beyond man's power to measure its 
extent, that which man sees being but a fraction 
of the whole. 

Every planet is, in fact, a miniature universe, 
and as each individual gives character to his 
personality by specialising certain features of his 
development, so every planet evolves certain 
features that remain the characteristics of it and 
its Spirit Spheres, and show that it has received 
a preponderance of development in one or other 
of the great primal elements that constitute the 
Universe. 

The prevalent teachings have been that there 
are only two great primal elements, or " first cause " 
of creation. Mind, which is Spirit, and Matter 
in which Spirit gives objective expression to all 

1 



2 PROBLEMS OF MEDIUMSHIP 

things created in Matter, from our Earth to all the 
countless stars that gem the midnight sky. 

Of late, however, the idea that there are three 
primal elements has begun to find expression in the 
writings of various occult teachers, who all claim 
originality for the idea, and in the oldest of all 
religions — now virtually extinct — there were the 
traditions concerning three great stars, or suns, 
each a distinct element showing its own individual 
colour, and all three in combination producing the 
Great Universe. 

The mystic doctrine of the Trinity in Unity, 
the Three in One, and the One in Three, has thus, 
in the objective half of creation, found expression 
in the three great primal elements. While many 
mystical interpretations of the Three in One are 
given by various religions in relation to the mental 
aspect, and the influence of the Three upon the 
evolution of the moral nature of man, the influence 
of the elements as mere automatic machinery 
for the evolution of the objective demonstration 
of the Universe, has become obscured and lost in 
the multiplication of doctrines evolved by the re- 
ligious minds in explanation of the meaning of the 
Trinity. 

The development of the properties of each 
element forms the purpose of their separate in- 
dividual evolution, and is completed by the final 
union of the Three in One harmonious whole. 

The force of attraction that draws the three 
elements together, and holds them in harmonious 



INTRODUCTORY 3 

combination, is counterbalanced by an equally 
strong opposition that causes them to separate 
again. Thus the individuality of each is preserved 
by giving to each its separate immortality. 

At the one extreme the positive opposition, 
which is due to their totally dissimilar char- 
acteristics, causes a strong repulsion, amounting 
even to antagonism, and at the other the negative 
receptive character of the same elements gives a 
condition of passivity that admits of amalgamation 
with the opposite temperament and qualities, and 
results in the union and blending of all. 

In objective Creation God the Father, as 
Creator, Ruler, Sustainer, may be said to express 
His power through these three primal elements. 

God the Son, begotten of His Father, expresses 
(in this relation) the created Universe, with man 
made in the image of his Maker, exemplified by man 
of the many types yet one dominant feature, of 
whom Adamite man is on our Earth the repre- 
sentative with the angels, who are of the man type 
also, and the Messiah, or true God-Man, as the 
highest expression of that Sonship with God the 
Father. 

God the Holy Ghost, or the Immortal Essence, 
is that element of pure spirituality that radiates 
from the Father, and gives life and immortality 
to every living thing throughout creation. 

God the One Supreme, is Father-Creator of 
all, in w 7 hom the other members of the Trinity 
find union and immortality. 



4 PROBLEMS OF MEDIUMSHIP 

This is a brief outline of the correspondence 
between the Trinity of the Higher Soul and its 
reflection in that Lower Soul of the Universe as 
represented in the primal elements. Many volumes 
might be written to give even a tithe of the aspects 
w T hich the mystery of the Trinity— the Three in 
One — present to the student of the psychic side of 
creation and its relation to the objective 
condition. 

The Three Primal Elements are called — 
I. The Physical Element : that is, Matter, 
and all that belongs to objective demon- 
stration in its most dense condition in the 
Universe. 

II The Astral Element : the vehicle of 
thought, and the element which unites 
mind to matter, or to the physical. 

III. The Spirit Element : which is called the 
Soul as expressing the Immortal Unit, 
and spirit as an all-pervading essence 
that radiates from the Divine, and gives 
immortality to all that is created, or 
given form and substance in the two 
inferior elements. 

These three primal elements of creation must not 
be confounded with what are commonly called the 
four elements : Air, Water, Fire, Earth; because 
these four are all objective to man's material senses, 
and are all existing in that .objective condition 
on the Earth. 



INTRODUCTORY 5 

These four are merely evolutions of the two 
subordinate elements of the Universal Trinity. 

Water and Air belong to the Astral Element. 

Earth and Fire belong to the Physical Element. 

They are transmuted into material objectivity, 
as the four elements of Earth, through the com- 
bination of the astral fluids with the physical 
fires, and the resultant reaction which this com- 
bination produced upon the dense matter of the 
physical globe. 

The three primal elements have existed, exist 
now, and will exist, through eternity, as three 
separate and dissimilar elements, each containing 
within itself all that is required for the complete 
evolution of a world representative of the peculiar 
characteristics of the one element in which it has 
evolved. At the same time, it must also be remem- 
bered, that a world may evolve in one element 
after another, and thus find the perfect trinity of 
power. 

Hence, there could be a world that represented 
the astral condition only, or the physical condition 
only ; or, again, a world that had evolved only in 
the spiritual element, and had never known ex- 
pression in either of the other conditions ; but, as 
spirit is the all-pervading essence of immortality, 
that essence would require to be present in both the 
astral and the physical worlds. It is the presence 
of the soul which gives independent life to the 
forms created in the other elements. 

The Universe that man sees, and which astro- 



6 PROBLEMS OF MEDIUMSHIP 

nomy describes as extending in all probability 
far beyond even the range of the most powerful 
telescope, is merely a portion of the host of worlds 
existing in the globe of the Physical Element ; 
for it is in the Physical Element that the Earth 
planet exists at present. The other globes of the 
Astral Element and of the Element of Pure Spirit 
are not in any way visible, although analogy teaches 
that they do exist, and seers who possess a high 
degree of spiritual clairvoyance can see them. 
Moreover, our Earth gives evidence, to the occult 
student, of the possession of an element other than 
that of either spirit or matter. 

Clairvoyance also perceives the three elements 
in one vast combination, with our solar system 
as a minute speck, scarcely discernible except as 
a small sun centre, or bright star. 

Concentration upon that star alone shows it 
to be a solar system with attendant planets, and 
the Earth, as the point of interest, emerges from 
the vision of that solar system. 

In attempting to give presentments of things 
seen by clairvoyance, only the broadest features 
can be shown, and that without the marvel- 
lous interblending of the three elements, which 
all attempts to describe the mystic Three in 
One must fail to convey, since there are no terms 
by which to express a spiritual mystery, nothing 
in material life by which to compare it, or present 
to mortal minds the spiritual appearance of a 
Universe as well as its physical conditions. 



INTRODUCTORY 7 

The three globes are each of a distinct colour ; 
the three primal colours from which all the others 
are formed by combinations. 

Surrounding these three globes is a ring of light 
that is ever varying and changing into myriad 
tints of a rainbow so delicate, so beautiful, so 
varied, and so ethereal, that no rainbow seen 
on Earth can more than faintly indicate what the 
spiritual rainbow is, and reproduce its more 
dominant shades of colour. 

This Rainbow of Light has the appearance of 
being a ring when seen with the three globes it 
encircles, but in reality it is an envelope of misty 
vapours that encloses the three in a complete 
covering of multi-coloured radiance, and is pro- 
duced by the emanations from the globes them- 
selves. It is, in fact, the aura of the Universe, 
and the multitude of colours is produced by the 
blending and separating, and blending again, of 
the colours belonging to each globe separately, and 
to all in combination — the Three in One and One 
in Three of the elements. 

The Rainbow Light has a deep significance to 
the psychic student, and gives the key to the 
conditions of spirit life. 

In the complete spectrum it indicates the highest 
attainment of harmonious unity in the spirit ego. 
That perfect attainment, however, belongs to the 
spirits of the Universe alone, and is only possessed 
by spirits who have found expression in all the 
elements in turn, and have entered the Divine sphere. 



8 PROBLEMS OF MEDIUMSHIP 

A reflection of the Rainbow Light is often seen 
by clairvoyants as surrounding spirits, and even 
persons in the flesh, but it is only a reflection, 
and, instead of indicating the attainment of power 
in all the elements, the rainbow, as a reflection, 
shows a dangerous condition of affiliation to those 
elemental conditions in which all colours are 
mingled in fragmentary and broken successions, 
the rags of colours left by the disintegration of 
partially evolved entities. 

Within the rainbow three distinct rings, or 
rather envelopes, of the primal colours may be 
noticed, and that they blend and form the complete 
spectrum as they float outwards ; the blended 
colours finally melt into white and a colourless 
vapour of exceeding clarity as of glass, or rather of 
liquid air. 

This transparent sheath is interposed between 
the rainbow light that envelops the Universe, 
and a background of a darkness so intense the 
blackness of a funereal pall hardly expresses the 
sombre aspect of its fathomless depths. 

In the Universe there is for ever a tremendous 
activity, a perpetual motion, an interchanging and 
blending of the elements and of the colours of the 
elements which causes them to be perpetually 
reborn in fresh combinations, and it is this continual 
action and reaction that generates the vital 
essences by which all the life of the Universe is 
sustained. The elements in the rainbow cloud are 
the supply-source of all living things. Each shade 



INTRODUCTORY 9 

of colour is seen to possess affinity to some type of 
entity and to certain individualities. 

Sometimes the waves of light separate into the 
three distinct colours, and float as veils enveloping 
each its own globe, again as vivid contrasts, and 
anon melting and blending in softest shades of 
harmony ; then, as long rays of light flashing 
from point to point, or uniting in long ribbons of 
colour to form the rainbow arch. The activity of 
this enclosing mantle of light serves to disturb 
the stagnation of the dark region in which the 
Universe appears to float, and by breaking up its 
stagnation and its dense cloud masses, prevents 
them from closing in over the Universe, and 
submerging it in those vast sullen, silent, well-nigh 
stagnant depths. 

That vast ocean of darkness is called " the Region 
of Chaos/' the realm of night, of disintegration 
and fusion of all things drawn into it ; a region of 
Death, because it causes the annihilation of all that 
gives individuality and permanence. 

In Chaos all elements are found floating in a 
condition of disintegration, instead of in distinct 
form, or as a combination harmoniously blended. 
They are seen in disorder, confusion, aimlessly 
drifting on that dark sea where such sluggish motion 
as can be discerned consists in the slow movement 
of the dull mass of darkness towards the attraction 
of the radiant, vivid Universe. 

Against the transparent sheath and the bright 
rainbow cloud the dark tide surges continually, only 



10 PROBLEMS OF MEDIUMSHIP 

to be broken up by its spear-like flashes of light, and 
driven back, leaving some of its' disintegrated 
e ements on those luminous shores around which 
the sombre Ocean of Chaos drifts. 

Throughout all the Universe law and order 
reign, but in Chaos there is neither, only this 
apparent force of attraction and repulsion following 
each other with rhythmical precision, and an aim- 
less drifting to and fro round the focus of attraction. 
Beyond the influence of this attraction there is 
absolute stagnation that appears to result in 
petrification, instead of dissolution, for even 
dissolution entails some action, and Chaos is an 
utterly dead region of dense impenetrable darkness, 
like a pall cutting off all power of further explor- 
ation of Infinitude, which must extend beyond 
even that veil of darkest night. 

Many and fantastic have been the theories con- 
cerning the region of Chaos. Where it extends 
none can tell us ; even pirits from the highest 
>pheres say it forms an impenetrable veil betw r een 
the mighty Universe and some vast Beyond, 
to which one can give no boundaries ; but, never- 
theless, wide as is the Universe and this great 
encircling Ocean of Chaos, there must be something 
beyond, and that it is possible that Chaos is the 
barrier between our Universe, of which the solar 
system in which our Earth revolves is so finite a 
part, and a yet more vast scheme of creation — 
another Universe existing in Infinitude. 

It may also be that the elements found drifting 



INTRODUCTORY 1 1 

on the shores of our Universe are the cast-off 
elements, the reliquia of some other worlds that 
have long since passed from the conditions known 
to the mortals and spirits of our Universe, and 
that the great law of change and progression into 
new forms and fresh conditions that are seen 
operating in everthing known to us is, in its in- 
finitely wider application, responsible for the 
conditions found in Chaos. 

In effect, this ocean of darkness separates us from 
the vast Beyond as seas separate continents on 
Earth, and give to each its separate individuality, 
its opportunities to evolve originality in its types 
and conditions. The probability is that our 
Universe, self-contained within its own sheath or 
armour, is but one of similar schemes of creation 
forming units in an ever-extending, ever-expanding 
series of examples of the Creator's power. That 
all alike have had their origin in, and derive their 
sustenance from, a Divine and Immortal Being, the 
true Great First Cause, the ultimate source and 
centre of a creation that has a centre but no limits 
to the possibilities of future creations, no end to 
its eternal existence, no boundaries to the radiations 
from that Centre of the Divine Creator's power. 

No spirit can truthfully tell us more than this. 
Some profess to have seen endless series of universes, 
extending into Infinitude, and give multiple details ; 
but in fact no spirit in communication with the 
Earth has seen beyond the veil that limits our 
Universe for our powers of sight. The vast extent 



12 PROBLEMS OF MEDIUMSHIP 

of our Universe offers in itself sufficient problems 
for the spirits, even of the highest spheres, to 
solve. Neither can any spirit truthfully say he 
has seen the Ultimate Centre : The God-head. 

Certain spirits claim that they have beheld the 
One Supreme. That must be left as an open ques- 
tion ; but as the Divine Soul is in all the Creator's 
works, and the inspirations of Divine Truth are the 
birthright of all, the power to conceive with the 
mental faculties a vision of God, who is Supreme 
Spirit, may be given to those who are sufficiently 
advanced to be spiritually in affinity with the 
Divine. 

Man, we are told, is made in the image of God, 
and a dim consciousness of the glory of the Divine 
Appearance would naturally be sometimes vouch- 
safed to man's ardent aspirations for communion 
with his Creator. 



The Globes of the Elements. 

I. The Physical Globe. — Since the Earth, 
with its spirit spheres, duplicates the leading 
features of the great Universe, and will in its final 
evolution possess the three primal elements in 
perfected combination, the nature of each element, 
and the influence which it has had, and is having, 
on the development of the Earth now, and of the 
men and the things upon it, becomes a very 
important subject to study, as giving the key to 



INTRODUCTORY 13 

the course of evolution our planet has already 
known, and to that which it is to receive and follow 
hereafter. 

In order to obtain the three elements, it is 
necessary to experience evolution in each separately, 
in order that the character of each may be given 
clearly ; just as one colour is thrown upon a screen, 
and then the next is sent to follow it when the first 
has been given full measure of time to leave its 
impress. 

Our Earth at present is in the conditions of the 
Physical Element, and the Sun, round which we 
revolve, is in the globe of the Physical Element, 
and is the parent sun for our Earth, as it is for all 
of its own group of planets that are now experiencing 
their physical expression. The whole expanse of 
the h?avens that astronomy recognises is in that 
physical globe and in the physical condition. 
Our Earth being in the physical stage of its 
evolution,, that element should be first reviewed. 

This elemenl" is shown as concentrated into a 
vast globe, whose constituents give materiality, 
objectivity, and physical force to all that is within 
its confines. 

The dominant colour of this globe is red, in 
varying shades, from deep rose-red to palest pink, 
where the negative colour — white — blends with 
it ; scarlet and flame colours, changing to brick- 
red, and then brown, where the dense matter of 
the lowest expression of physical life comes into 
contact with the Ocean of Chaos. 



14 PROBLEMS OF MEDIUMSHIP 

The Astral Element. — The dominant colour 
of this element is blue, because blue is the colour 
of the mental powers, and the astral element in 
itself is colourless, so that any colour that it shows 
is always merely a reflection of some attribute of 
the thing reflected ; and mind, being the dominant 
influence over the Astral Element, that which is 
in true affinity to it, the colour of the mental 
faculties, gives the blue to the astral globe. At its 
higher pole the Astral Element emits a pure, 
colourless ray that finally becomes tinted with the 
gold of the spiritual globe. It shows first as a pale 
blue, becoming silver where the negative white is 
reflected in it, and then as pure silver. 

Lastly, the ray becomes a white, silvery flame. 
That silvery flame is the pure spirit of the Astral 
Element in its highest expression. At its lowest 
expression, or pole pointing to Chaos, the blue 
becomes dark, dull, steel-coloured, then ashen- 
grey, and finally is lost in the blackness reflected 
from the region of darkness. 

The Astral Element being the vehicle for thought 
transmission, and the element in which mental 
creations find objective demonstration apart from 
the Physical Element, the various shades of blue 
and of grey that are seen in the auras of mortals 
or the robes of a spirit indicate the degree to which 
the higher or the lower influences of this element 
dominate those individuals. 

The Astral Element, in uniting mind to matter- 
is the intermediary between those extreme con- 



INTRODUCTORY 15 

ditions. Mind, as the attribute of the Divine 
Personality, could control matter without an 
intermediary, since all power is an attribute of the 
Divine ; but God rules His Universe by laws that 
He has given for its regulation and progression, 
and one law is that mind cannot act directly upon 
matter, but requires the intervention of this Astral 
Element, and so mind does not enter into matter, ex- 
cept through the agency of the intermediate element. 

Matter belongs to the low^er polarity of the 
Physical Element ; mind belongs to the higher 
polarity, in whatever element it expresses itself ; 
and until the Astral Element forms an intermediate 
condition uniting the two neither can affect the 
other. Thus a spirit cannot lift a table, nor move a 
rock, purely by the impetus of his will-power ; 
but when the will-force acts on the sensitive, 
uniting Astral Element, the action of mind on 
matter is accomplished. 

Because the astral has this power, in uniting 
two opposite forces, it is the vehicle of the magic 
arts, the phenomena producer in the alchemist's 
laboratory or in the science room ; for the pious 
Hindu, or for the Red Indian medicine-man. 
In this the Astral Element has a power that belongs 
to itself alone. 

The Spiritual Element (the Soul) is the essence 
of immortality ; the animating, sustaining force 
of all life. It permeates the other elements, and 
gives them their immortality. It is the One in the 
Three — the Supreme Element. 



16 PROBLEMS OF MEDIUMSHIP 

As the Soul, this element expresses itself as an 
essence, giving to all things power to exist as 
units of the great whole. 

As the Spirit, it expresses the individual unit, the 
separate personality that can exist apart from any 
bodily form of any element, except that of the 
spiritual. 

Soul and Spirit are one, yet can be separated 
into two expressions of the one essence. 

The colour of the Spiritual Essence is 
yellow, or rather gold, as its highest expression, 
with white at its most negative condition. 

Polarity of the Globes. — These globes of the 
elements each show the existence of polar attraction 
as influencing their conditions. Each has its higher 
and its lower pole, which may be said to correspond 
to^the North and South Pole of the Earth, in that 
there is a constant interchange of magnetism of 
negative and of positive character between them. 
These two polarities control the lower and the 
higher influences and conditions of the elements of 
each globe. 

The centre of a Universe, being the ultimate 
goal of all evolution in the Universe, and repre- 
sentative of the Divine Source of all life, is 
the highest state to which the spirit can attain, 
and therefore the higher poles of each element are 
found to point to that central zone ; the lower 
poles, being farthest from it, touch the rainbow 
Jight that envelops all the Universe, and point 



INTRODUCTORY 17 

to the region of Chaos than which no lower condition 
can be known. 

The study of the influence which polarity exerts 
over all evolution is so important, and so inter- 
blended with every condition of evolution, that 
again and again its operations must be traced, 
not alone through one stage, but throughout all. 
The polarisation of each globe holds all its con- 
stituents in cohesion. The lower pole also serves 
to attract from Chaos such of the disintegrated 
elements as are in affinity with it, thus recovering 
and using again the lost fragments floating in that 
sombre sea. The powerful magnets in the lower 
poles revivify the waste materials, and utilise them 
in forming the suns and planets and stars ; while 
the higher poles attract the finer essence of the 
elements. 

The Core of each Element is the point at 
which the essence is found in its most highly 
concentrated condition, and the source from which 
power is radiated. 

The Physical Element is in its own nature the 
farthest from that type of mentality that belongs 
to the spirit. It is the least sensitive and least 
responsive of the three. In its lowest expression 
as matter it is a dull, formless mass, with no features ; 
but in its highest expression it is radiant energy 
personified. Combined together these two con- 
ditions possess great formative power. 

The Core of the Physical Element repre- 
sents perpetual activity — unresting, untiring — and 



18 PROBLEMS OF MEDIUMSHIP 

the constant generation of vital force — electricity, 
fire. 

Strong physical power always manifests itself 
in active movements, often in conflicts with any- 
thing that opposes it and obstructs its movements. 
It is aggressive, usurping, dominating. It creates, 
builds up, and then destroys the things it has 
created, and re-creates them in a new form. 
Hence, the core of the Physical Element appears 
as a sun-centre of stupendous activity, where 
repose would be impossible, and in which all the 
constituents of physical life and its organisms are 
being fused and vitalised and cast forth with 
tremendous violence and raging energy. 

By one action this sun-centre attracts its own 
element to itself, and by a contrary action ejects 
it again in a constant stream, vitalised and charged 
with the magnetic force of that glowing, palpitating 
heart of this globe, to flow through the whole realm 
of physical existences, and charge with life and 
with power of growth in objectivity all those 
countless solar systems, star clustres, planets, 
and worlds — every form of life that is within the 
vast realm of the physical globe. 

The Sun, round which the Earth revolves, is the 
direct offspring of the Physical Element, and as 
such is a great store-house of physical energy, a 
powerful magnet to attract the vital force from the 
fiery core of the Physical Element. To the Sun the 
Earth owes its material life, and from this far 
vaster storehouse the Sun, as only one of 



INTRODUCTORY 19 

many solar systems, draws its power of sustain- 
ing the Earth and the other planets in material 
forms. 

The physical is the simplest, least complicated 
of the elements ; its operations follow mechanical 
laws, fixed routines that are tangible and easily 
discovered, quickly followed and grasped in their 
train of evolution. It is not difficult to study 
physical nature once the key to it is found, and the 
future may be safely predicted from the past 
until physical evolution encounters and falls under 
the control of the other elements. Then begin 
those variants on the automatic routine that have 
produced so great a change in the normal physical 
routine, and given such myriads of individual 
types of life in all stages of the Earth's evolution. 

The Core of the Astral Element is the exact 
counterpoise to the glowing fiery core of the 
physical. It is seen as a beautiful fixed star, of 
intense brilliance and great magnitude, because 
its condition of repose allows of the consolidation 
and multiplication of its light, giving the light 
power to exercise sway, so that its soft light is 
diffused almost to the limits of its globe. 

The Astral Star Centre does not create 
anything ; its realm of passive repose gives only 
a sleep that has the stillness of death, yet is far 
removed from the annihilation of death ; for the 
Astral Element preserves, it does not destroy. 
The power of the astral largely consists in reflecting, 
as in a mirror or in a still pool, the creations of the 



20 PROBLEMS OF MEDIUMSHIP 

other elements, especially the mental creations. The 
truth, the wisdom, the beauty of the highest 
thoughts from the highest minds, are received 
on the sensitive astral mirror, and remain as 
crystallised images, thought pictures, that are 
thus depicted and preserved for eternity's im- 
perishable records. 

Strictly speaking, a star is a heavenly body 
that reflects the light from the Sun ; the Sun being 
the generator of life and light, and the star the 
receiver. The Astral or " Star ■■' Element does not 
create, but only preserves the creations of the 
physical and the spiritual, which are both creators 
on different planes — the physical creating form, 
the spirit giving life, the astral consolidating and 
preserving their creations. Were it not for the 
steadying and preserving properties of the Astral 
Element when joined to the physical, the restless 
activity and destructive properties of the physical 
would prevent its creations from attaining 
maturity. 

Intense cold characterises the astral fluids, 
as intense heat characterises the physical fires. 
The astral worlds appear as worlds of ice and snow, 
but with a transparent beauty beyond the power 
of ice or snow to represent. If the core of the 
Physical Element is a glowing furnace, the core 
of the Astral Element is as a diamond scintillating 
with brilliant lights. 

The intense cold of the astral magnetism is due 
to this icy reservoir, from whence it radiates 



INTRODUCTORY 21 

throughout all its own globe, and floats tranquilly 
over the outer rings in soft waves of vapour, 
like veils of white and silver mists, and glistens on 
everything objective with myriad rays of pure 
light, till they seem as the frost flowers that sparkle 
in the brightest moonlight. 

These strange ethereal wraiths of vapour become 
also the garments of light in which the astral 
spirits clothe their forms in shining robes that no 
words can describe. And always the heart of this 
lovely star realm is as a calm, clear, frozen pool, 
in which the soul of all things may be mirrored 
in perfect beauty, perfect truth. 

It is the astral light in its purity by which mental 
clairvoyance is enabled to read thoughts, receive 
inspirations from other minds, and transmit thought 
messages to or from all conditions of material 
existence. When slightly mixed with the Physical 
Element, the astral fluid assumes a faint, milky 
tint, and gives objective clairvoyance. When the 
mind is concentrated in meditation, the affinity 
of the astral for the mental causes its fluids to flow 
towards the mind thus concentrated, and to 
illuminate the aura of the " thinker " with its soft 
light, so that the mirror-like qualities of this 
astral light serve as a medium, in which not only 
mental images, but spiritual realities, can be 
shown to the clairvoyant, who can thus " see " on 
the mental planes. 

It is this astral fluid that gives the state of 
suspended animation, the stillness of the trance- 



22 PROBLEMS OF MEDIUMSHIP 

sleep, in which everything is preserved and held 
in a condition of negation. 

Mixed with the physical element, this astral 
fluid undergoes many changes, and in its impure 
condition on the elemental plane of the Earth 
becomes the vehicle for evil and dangerous 
manifestations ; the astral element in itself being 
a negative element, and reproductive of whatever 
is amalgamated with it. 

The Core of the Spiritual Element can 
scarcely be described ; so radiant is its appearance 
that even the eyes of the spirit cannot steadily 
regard its brightness. Light, life, power, mental 
illumination — every emotion, from supreme love 
to deepest hate, find concentration in the heart of 
the spirit realm ; and all find expression : the 
fires of passion, the light of love, the glory of 
conquest and of religious fervour. 

The heart of this element is both a sun and a 
star in union. It possesses the extreme positive 
quality of the Sun and the absolute negative of the 
Star, and creates the spiritual flame of life and 
immortality from their union. The power of 
giving life or death belongs to this spiritual flame 
that may be seen passing over the individual unit, 
for whom an entire change of condition is due. It 
is so life-giving that even Death relaxes its miser's 
grasp, and yields up the soul imprisoned in the form 
of clay when that spiritual flame passes over the 
earthly prison-house. To the embryo form that has 
never throbbed with life, the spiritual flame gives 



INTRODUCTORY 23 

independent existence, separate identity, and 
pervades the whole Universe with the essence of 
immortality. From the instant that the spiritual 
fire touches any created thing it becomes a distinct 
unit, and as such is heir of immortality, however 
humble may be its status in the realm of creation. 
The other elements clothe the unit and give it 
expression in form, but only the Divine essence of 
the spirit can give immortality. The other elements 
may be separated from the unit and dissolved into 
elements again, but once the soul has entered any 
unit of creation it remains as its integral part 
for ever. 

The all-pervading nature of the soul essence 
might give the impression that it would require 
no special globe of its own, but that impression 
would be erroneous, because the spiritual is found 
existing, not only in everything, but also apart 
from everything, in its own pure element alone. 
It has its separate identity in the Trinity, as well 
as its harmonious unity, and it is found in the globe 
of spirit essence only, unmixed with either of the 
other elements. 

The Polarity of the Spiritual Globe domin- 
ates and controls the higher and lower polarities 
of the other elements, and determines the conditions 
in each. 

The Spiritual Essence is positive in its higher 
polarity, and negative in its lower. Negative, it 
is the immortal essence permeating the Universe, all 
unindividualised entities, and the lower types of 



24 PROBLEMS OF MEDIUMSHIP 

creation ; it is the soul of the nature-realm. 
Positive, it is the dominant force that gives character, 
moulds the destiny, and is the spirit ego of the 
higher type, which is the man-type of creation. 

As the Absolute Ego, the higher soul is both 
good and evil ; moral responsibility, which belongs 
only to the higher type, introduces factors that are 
absent from the evolution and the irresponsible 
condition of the lower soul. 

The term "higher soul" is used as expressing 
the responsible individuality of the man-type of 
created life. Only man belongs to this type. 
Every type below man belongs to the polarity of 
the lower soul. 

The higher soul may be characterised by either 
moral or immoral attributes, for the status of the 
higher soul, as the superior, is not due to its own 
achievements, but to its type, which is derived from 
the angels, and through them from God, in Whose 
image man and the angels — and as we are expressly 
told, only man and the angels — are made. The 
condition in which man as a spirit will find himself 
hereafter will be the result of his moral or immoral 
development, but his soul will still be of the higher 
type whichever path he has followed. Ultimate 
triumph of good over evil is the highest ideal, and 
gives the most perfect condition attainable ; but, 
although an individual soul, if it elects to follow 
the path of evil rather than of good will thereby 
sink into the domain of the lower polarities that 
interlude will not alter the type to which the 



INTRODUCTORY 25 

man-soul belongs, nor destroy the affinity of this 
type of soul to the higher polarities. Hence, 
ultimate return to the higher status is always 
possible to every man-soul, however low he may 
sink, however vile he may become. 

The man-type always represents the higher 
soul, even in a condition of great degradation. 
The lower soul is represented by all the nature- 
realm — all living entities other than the man-types. 
The lower soul is always found in subjection to the 
higher, even among savage races. 

The Earth planet, as an independent unit, into 
which the essence of the spirit has passed, possesses 
immortality as an individual planet. Although the 
forms of all things on Earth are destined to change 
and pass away, their spiritual counterparts will 
continue to exist in a higher condition as appendages 
of the higher soul that has been identified with all 
things during the material stage of their evolution. 

The Earth is, therefore, rightly described as 
possessed of a soul — that anima mundi of the 
Ancients. It is a collective subordinate soul, 
belonging to all the lower polarities. When the 
final evolution of the Earth planet is accomplished, 
and it has passed through the final etherealisation 
of the purely spiritual element, it will, with its 
spirits of every type and class, pass into that Divine 
centre, which is the ultimate Heaven of our Universe. 
The limiting phrase, " our Universe/' is used, 
because, as already stated, we have every reason 
to believe there is an " ultimate centre of Divine 



26 PROBLEMS OF MEDIUMSHIP 

life !:■ existing somewhere, quite beyond the power 
of thought to fix its position. 



The Divine Centre of our Universe is, at 
the innermost point of the triangle, formed by the 
higher poles of each of the three globes of the 
elements. It is a region of multi-coloured light, 
reproducing the rainbow ring once more, but as 
much more ethereal than the outer rainbow as 
that arc of light transcends the merely earth-born 
rainbow ; and in the very heart of the Divine 
realm there is a suffusion of exquisitely beautiful 
golden and silvery luminosity that shimmers through 
the rainbow as through a veil. That Inner Radiance 
is that highest Heaven, which eyes cannot see, 
nor words describe. 

In the attempt to give even an approximate idea 
of the Universe, the very effort to show the relation 
of one part to another has the effect of seeming to 
limit that which is a well-nigh limitless realm for 
mortal thought, and this centre of Divine life is 
vast beyond words to convey, or the calculations 
of the mathematicians to gauge ; when we repeat 
that our whole solar system is but a finite speck, 
a point of light in that enormous Universe, we still 
convey but a feeble idea of its magnitude. 

The rainbow cloud that encircles the Divine 
centre, and touches the poles of the elements, is 
called the Inner Plane of Expression. Between this 
plane and the Outer Plane of Expression there is a 



INTRODUCTORY 27 

continual interchange of elements — a travelling 
out from the inner plane of negative soul units 
of the higher polarity, and the return of positive 
individualities from their pilgrimage through the 
experiences of many stages of life. 

The Outer Plane of Expression is a wide 
belt of active life, situated between the extreme 
poles of each element, and girdling the Universe 
as the imaginary line of the Equator encircles the 
Earth, and gives to it a tropical region of extreme 
productivity. 

All the inorganic, negative, unindividualised 
elements of the lower soul polarities are drawn up 
to this Plane of Expression to find there definite 
form and type. 

All the positive, organic, individual units, that 
are the direct offspring of the higher soul polarities, 
are drawn from the Inner Plane of Expression,to find, 
on that Outer Plane of Expression, independent 
power of thought and of action, and of conscious, 
responsible existence ; to reap the harvest of moral 
or immoral lives ; to develop intellectual powers, 
and conquer all inferior conditions, or be conquered 
by them. 

This wide Plane of Expression incircles the whole 
Universe ; but each element that it incircles holds 
in affinity to itself, and to its own particular part 
of that zone, all those worlds and suns and in- 
dividualities that are passing through their evolution 
in that particular element, i.e., the stage in which 
that element dominates their evolution. 



28 PROBLEMS OF MEDIUMSHIP 

The evolution of a world, or anything, through a 
particular element, must not be confused with the 
rudimentary , or elemental, stage of evolution, 
because the most complete and perfect evolution 
of a world must be accomplished in one element 
before it can pass to another ; whereas rudimentary, 
or elemental, conditions are always unfinished, 
and are only the preparation for the true and 
permanent stages. 

It is upon the widest part of each globe, and 
farthest from either pole, that the Plane of 
Expression is found, for extreme negative, or 
extreme positive, conditions are always barren of 
results, because they limit all power of expression, 
and expression means giving tangibility and life 
to the thing expressed. 

The force of attraction from either pole being 
less on the Plane of Expression, the possibility of 
attracting the higher to the lower, or vice versa, 
begins to operate there, and produces an interchange 
of qualities, a blending of forces, a union of negative 
to positive. Passage from one polarity to the other 
is possible ; that which has become affiliated to 
the higher soul can pass to it from the lower, 
and be carried by the higher towards the Divine 
Centre on the return journey to it. On the other 
hand, the higher soul, as an individuality that has 
incorporated the conditions of the lower soul 
and allowed them to dominate the personality, will 
be drawn across the dividing line, and carried down 
into the lower polarity and into the nature world ; 



INTRODUCTORY 29 

into the subjective, subordinate conditions of the 
lower soul. 

We speak of downwards in the sense that it is 
a descent to go into an inferior condition ; while 
to go upwards means the attainment of a more 
advanced condition, as setting the individual 
above and superior to all inferior states. We say 
we go down into hell, because we deteriorate in 
doing so, and that we go up into heaven, and in 
doing so become superior, as the possessors of 
boundless power of the highest type (i.e., most 
spiritual type). 

Man's life begins at the Inner Plane of 
Expression ; he finds independent individuality and 
personal responsibility on the Outer Plane of 
Expression, and returns again to find his final and 
highest expression of individual independence 
n the Divine Centre : for, whereas all things 
proceed from the Divine in a state of negative 
" possibilities " and individual immaturity, all 
things return to the Divine as perfected spirit 
entities, stamped w T ith the character evolved 
during their cycles of progress into dominant in- 
dividualities, and with the powers that they have 
gained by their own efforts, and which, having been 
won by each individual for himself, will therefore 
be retained throughout eternity. 

It is the formation of character that gives 
individuality ; it is individuality that gives and 
constitutes immortality for each soul. 

To teach that any individuality in either the 



30 PROBLEMS OF MEDIUMSHIP 

lower or the higher polarities becomes absorbed 
finally in the Divine life again, is to teach an error ; 
for to do that would mean the obliteration of it 
as a separate ego, whereas the whole aim and object 
of creation, and of evolution — that means pro- 
gression — is to give separate independence to every 
unit in creation, and that indestructible individuality 
that is the very essence of immortality. 



CHAPTER II 

THE ORIGIN OF OUR PLANET EARTH 

In that vast Outer Plane of Expression, described 
in outline already, are to be found a multitude of 
suns, accompanied by their family groups of planets, 
to which each sun is the parent centre and supply 
source of physical life. 

Each of the three primal elements is the realm 
for the evolution of worlds in every stage of 
development, but it is in the physical element 
that we find family groups of planets and satellites 
forming a solar system ; neither of the other 
elements shows this feature. 

Some of the suns resemble ours ; others show 
marked differences, from which the conclusion 
may fairly be drawn that the planets in a solar 
system, like the individuals in a family group, or 
races and nations, evolve idiosyncrasies of their 
own in using and combining the universal elements 
common to all. 

Astrologers, and even astronomers, recognise 
this when they give names to the companion planets 
of a solar system and to the spirits, or gods, who are 
supposed to rule the destiny of the planet, and 
assign particular characters to the influence each 
radiates. 

The presence of a particular planet in a solar 

31 D 



32 PROBLEMS OF MEDIUMSHIP 

family group does not prove that it is finding its 
first expression of individuality there. Some of 
our companion planets are doing so ; others show 
that they are what may be termed "re-births," 
after some previous experience of life in another 
element than the physical one. 

A planet that is primarily of the physical 
evolution will show a superabundance of that type 
of power and its activities ; our Earth does not 
do so. 

A child shows first the characteristics of its 
parents, and a world in its first age as an infant 
world would show the prevailing note of its original 
form, if it were a re-birth. Our planet, in its earliest 
ages of this physical era, gave evidence of possessing 
certain conditions that could not be attributed 
to the physical element in which it was then 
existing as a new-born unit ; on the contrary, 
those conditions were directly foreign to the 
physical type. Our Earth resembles a shield, 
with two distinct sides to it, one of which may be 
called the daylight aspect, and the other the 
night side of Nature. 

If the Earth were a purely physical earth, there 
is no reason why the night should bring into 
activity a thousand mysterious things that seem 
non-existent by day ; that, indeed, show strong 
antagonism to the powerful rays of the physical 
sun. 

The physical condition dominates our Earth 
now, but it does not wholly possess it ; and in the 



ORIGIN OF THE EARTH 33 

earliest ages there was evidence of another con- 
dition that seemed even more dominant. From 
whence did the Earth derive that other side of its 
nature ? 

Again, if we judged of the Earth's age only from 
the stage of evolution it has attained now, and the 
rate at which changes in it take place to-day, 
and accept the theory that it has evolved thus 
from a gradually consolidating ball of insensate 
materials, we would require to assign to it an almost 
fabulous period during which that long, slow process 
was taking place. 

But, supposing the Earth as we know it to-day 
is an example of a world that has known existence 
first in another and more sensitive, more rapidly 
responsive element than dull, insensate matter, 
would not that circumstance account for both the 
curious dual nature of our Earth and also con- 
siderably shorten the period that its evolution 
into its present form matter would entail ? Would 
it not throw light on the problem of how man, 
supposed to begin as an aboriginal savage, could 
have been the constructor of those magnificent 
palaces, those splendid temples, those wonderful 
cities, those strange and astonishing monuments 
whose ruins are scattered all over the Earth. 

Re-birth means transition into new conditions. 
The ego is born again, but into fresh surroundings 
to obtain a new form of experiences.* 

Reincarnation means a return into the old 

* See Note on Reincarnation at end 



34 PROBLEMS OF MEDIUMSHIP 

conditions in order to find an opportunity to 
reverse the former line of evolution, or make 
reparation for evils done. 

Rebirth into successive conditions is a law of 
the Universe ; but re-birth and reincarnation 
must not be confused in their relation to pro- 
gression, nor held to mean one and the same 
thing. 

The great truths contained in these laws has been 
grasped by the minds of men, and then greatly 
overworked to fit into all sorts of schemes of 
creation. 

A planet and its people would evolve first into 
the most perfect condition possible in the one 
element before being reborn into another ; while 
man in reincarnating is simply gathering round his 
spirit ego again a form of flesh that in all essentials 
reproduces his previous body of material elements. 

The soul of all things being first purely 
negative, expressionless, and void of character, 
is therefore so plastic that it assumes personality 
from the imprint given by the parents. Never 
again can the soul be so absolute a negative, and 
never again does it receive the imprint of character 
from others. It is the first birth that gives the 
keynote to the evolution of the soul ; and, while 
experiences and the development of the individual 
powers neutralise the effects of that first imprint, 
they do not obliterate it. The power of this first 
formative influence is most clearly traceable among 
those entities where mentality is non-existent, 



ORIGIN OF THE EARTH 35 

and responsibility has no share in the process of 
evolution. 

The lower we go in the scale of evolution, the 
more distinctly do we find evidences of the dual 
nature of our earth planet, and that the element of 
the astral globe, and its magnetic conditions, are 
a powerful formative factor in its physical develop- 
ment, although the physical is now the dominant 
one, and is becoming more distinctly so with 
every passing century. 

That night side of Nature, when the rays of the 
physical sun no longer beat down upon the Earth, 
gives to the astral element a season of control of 
the nature forces, and bathes the Earth in the con- 
solidating astral fluids, thus enabling embryo 
life in every form to retain the shape it is assuming ; 
whereas the strong rays of the Sun would disperse 
the elemental materials before they had amal- 
gamated into form ; showing that, while the Sun 
gives life to the matured entity, the embryo stage 
requires the return into an approximation to that 
first condition in which the planet Earth itself 
evolved the seeds of all living things now upon it. 

Our Earth owes its types to the evolution of the 
astral world — our planet's first vehicle of expression 
in form. The types have varied and expanded into 
a multiplicity of types, as the materials of Earth 
were re-created under physical conditions, but in 
origin they are all of the astral stage of evolution, 
and all retain affinity to astral influences. The 
Earth now is contained in the matrix of the old 



36 PROBLEMS OF MEDIUMSHIP 

astral world, and is evolving its spiritual replica 
in preparation for its final birth into the true 
spiritual elements. 

Our present Earth is not so old as might be 
expected were all things evolved from insensate 
formless matter. It would, indeed, require a 
foretaste of eternity, were the super-sensitive 
soul of man required to evolve through every form 
of dull insensate matter up to the ape stage, and 
then to that of civilised communities. 

The astral element, however, affords a vehicle 
that is at once far more plastic, far more responsive, 
far closer to the spiritual conditions as a mould in 
which to shape the original types in all their 
many and wonderful aspects. 

Furthermore, those who base their theories of 
evolution on the aspect of the Earth as it is to-day 
forget that it was once an infant world, even in 
its material development, and that embryo life 
is far more rapid in its growth than life in its mature 
stages ; that, in fact, growth in bulk ceases with 
the attainment of maturity, and there is a period 
when Nature only reproduces the amount of 
materials required for sustenance of the developed 
forms. Then comes a time when less and less is 
produced, and as age advances reproduction 
ceases, the form shrinks, and death brings the 
inevitable change, or translation, into a new 
condition. The old order passes away, because 
there is no longer any purpose in its continuance ; 
a new era has been attained. 



ORIGIN OF THE EARTH 37 

Wherefore it is a mistake to measure the age 
of our Earth by the rate at which changes take 
place now ; or to judge of past eras of evolution 
by the present very material stage. 

Without any occult theorising, it is quite logical 
to assume that all life, all types, were evolved 
more rapidly in the first eras of the present material 
evolution of our planet ; and that, while the " seven 
days " of the Biblical account of Creation may well 
be regarded as periods rather than as days, those 
periods do not involve such a vast measure of 
antiquity as the Orientals declare to have elapsed, 
nor does the Biblical account necessarily preclude 
the possibility of an astral evolution for a world 
created in thought by the mind, and at the com- 
mands of the Supreme Creator. 

An astral stage would hasten the process of 
formation, not interfere with it ; for in a world of 
the astral element mind would dominate the 
creation, and all things conceived by the mental 
powers would find form and expression in that 
element, which is a million times more responsive 
than matter. The young Earth would not require 
to waste its vitalising energies in a constant 
struggle with the nature forces of the lower 
polarities.; while the consolidating and preservative 
properties of the astral element would give com- 
pletion to all types more rapidly and cause them to 
remain, instead of wearing away, as all things do 
under the restless influence of the physical 
element. 



38 PROBLEMS OF MEDIUMSHIP 

An astral world and its people would reach 
maturity swiftly, and remain unchanged for certainly 
very long periods. If we study the astral forms 
on Earth now, we find that they show this tenacity 
of identity, and we can understand how those 
astral seeds from which all physical types are 
evolved into material existence have survived 
from the former stage of purely astral creations. 

The great Astral-elemental Plane of the Earth 
now contains a number of astral roots, from which 
the astral bodies of all types are germinated 
still. 

In early days these roots were much more 
numerous, and their peculiar properties more 
strongly demonstrated in the astral envelopes of 
both men and animals, and there are indications 
that a period will arrive when the physical element 
will have almost eliminated its astral partner, 
and demonstrations on the astral plane become 
impossible. 

At present everything on Earth has its dual 
envelope — its astral body as well as its physical 
form — and it is desirable to study the past history 
of Earth's evolutions and of the astral era. 

Persons who accept the account of the Creation, 
as given in the Bible, may contend that it does 
not agree with the theory of an astral world and its 
re-birth into another element ; but there is no real 
conflict in the two ideas. 

It must be remembered that the story of Creation 
was given to a people in the early ages of the present 



ORIGIN OF THE EARTH 39 

Earth, and given in language easily understood 
by them, and that much would be omitted and 
much summarised to make a brief, easily com- 
prehended story. 

A Supreme God could create a world in seven 
days, or seven seconds, if he so desired ; but where 
we see a routine of law and order prevail throughout 
a Universe, we may assume that Creation follows 
that routine of laws. To the Ancients the Earth 
was the all of the Universe, and the story of 
Creation would, to them, refer only to the Earth. 
It may have referred to the Universe we know, 
and then to the Earth as it is to-day, and the 
account given in the Bible be quite accurate, 
and still admit of an astral-evolved stage before 
the physical era. 

We are told that " the Spirit of God moved upon 
the face of the waters, where all was void and 
darkness." Is not that the Ocean of Chaos ? 

Then follows the account of how light came from 
the darkness, and life and substance ; form where 
there was none ; law and order where chaos alone 
reigned ; the night and the day ; all living things 
from the mere elements. Stage by stage, each 
higher than the previous one, the Universe we see 
emerged from the darkness of complete negation. 
Our Earth was a unit of that Universe. 

Then comes the story of our Earth from the 
stage at which Adam appears , because Adam was 
the man of special interest to his descendants, 
and the story of Eden was the story that concerned 



40 PROBLEMS OF MEDIUMSHIP 

the people whose position on Earth was due to the 
sin of the first parents of the physical race. 

The story of the redemption of Adam's race is 
the story of the Earth of to-day, but that does not 
negative the possibility that the Earth has another 
story of another race than that of the physical 
creation ; for in the story of Adam and Eve there 
is mention of " the Serpent in Eden," and it may 
fairly be asked, who and what was this serpent 
who could speak to Eve with the voice of a man ? 

No living thing in the lower kingdoms has this 
power of speech ; they are dumb, so far as the 
language of man is concerned. 

Why were Adam and Eve warned not to eat 
the fruit of one tree in all that garden ? 

The story of the astral world and its ending 
answers these questions, and gives the key to the 
mysteries of the Astral-elemental Plane of the Earth 
to-day ; so that there are many reasons why the 
story of the astral world has very great interest 
for the psychic student. 

Materialists, and also many persons who believe 
in the existence of the spirit, deny that there are 
such things as astral bodies, or astral anything, 
as a distinct element in Nature ; but there are also 
other persons who are very conscious of the existence 
of this astral phase, and it is for them principally 
that this book is written, because such persons 
run great dangers from these astral conditions, 
which do not menace the more strictly " physical " 
individuals. The astral element, and all that belongs 



ORIGIN OF THE EARTH 41 

to it, is a part of the economy of Nature. In its 
subordinate and natural condition, it serves an 
important purpose ; it is only when it is given undue 
development that it becomes a danger. 

The theory of evolution loses none of its value, 
but we must modify its interpretations as applied 
to the story of the Earth, if we accept the theory 
that there are three distinct elements in the 
Universe, and totally different laws of evolution 
that apply to each ; so that anything created to 
find expression in one of the elements cannot 
evolve through the law that applies to a different 
element ; it must evolve in accordance with the 
law of its own element, and that element alone. 
At the same time, there are certain universal laws 
that apply to evolution in all elements. 

In considering the development of the astral 
body, and of the physical body, this point ought to 
be especially emphasised, both in its relation to the 
evolution of an astral world and to the evolution of 
a physical one. 

It must likewise be remembered that there is a 
fundamental difference between the path of 
evolution of the higher soul, which is the human 
ego, and that of the lower soul, which belongs to 
the nature world, and that the Earth planet itself 
belongs still to the polarity of that lower soul, 
and that its evolution takes place under the 
operations of those automatic laws, called the laws 
of nature ; while man, who belongs to the higher 
polarity, evolved his personality under the operation 



-!2 PROBLEMS OF MEDIUMSHIP 

of the law of individual responsibility , and only 
comes under the influence of the automatic laws 
of the lower polarity through his material body. 

In the physical element, and in its lower polarity, 
the production of new forms takes place so auto- 
matically as to be quite separate from any mental 
influence ; indeed, the law under which they are 
produced will operate in spite of any mental 
influence brought to bear on the process. 

Thus a world that had been created in the 
material element would go on building up form 
after form, and through stage after stage with 
routine precision, because the law of matter and 
of the lower polarity would be the formative 
factors ; but a world created by " thought/' and 
transmitted into objectivity in that the astral 
element, which is the servant of the mind, would 
come under another law of evolution. 

An astral world would come into being as a 
picture designed by a great artist appears on the 
mirror of the mind before it is transferred to 
canvas. 

The powerful influence that the astral fluids 
exercise in attracting thoughts would cause the 
astral world to draw to itself the thought creations 
of many minds, besides those of the mind that first 
conceived it. Many beautiful, but negative, 
creations of the spirits of the Divine sphere would 
find reflection in the astral aura, and become 
a part of its conditions thereby. All that was vivid 
with life in the mental planes of spirit life would 



ORIGIN OF THE EARTH 43 

contribute something to the evolution of an astral 
Earth ; for the astral is a receiver, and not an 
originator — it multiplies its possessions by reflecting 
them from mind to mind, and absorbing what each 
mind adds to the original reflection. Finally, it 
transfers the whole to the inner mirror of its soul. 
Of itself the astral has created nothing ; it has 
only received what the other elements have created, 
and given those creations a permanence in its own 
element. 

This peculiarity of the astral element may be 
remembered in relation to persons who develop 
affinity to the astral aura of the Earth, and who 
become apparently highly productive in thought 
creation. 

A thought in itself is an intangible thing, 
evanescent and perishable, swallowed up, and, in 
the Earth plane where the physical influence, which 
is destructive, is strong, is frequently devoured by 
the hungry minds that are ever seeking inspirations. 
To give power to a thought, so that it will live, and 
be the parent of other thoughts suggested by it, 
and a distinct influence in the world even for an 
hour, requires that the thought shall find immersion 
in some element ; otherwise, thoughts are as 
nebulous as mists, and like cloud shapes that assume 
form only to lose it again for ever. Myriads of 
thoughts have perished unborn, because they were 
never carried beyond the nebulous condition. To 
become tangible, a thought must find embodiment 
in the aura of the thinker ; it must clothe itself in 



44 PROBLEMS OF MEDIUMSHIP 

the astral element, which, as a fine essence, envelops 
every mentality in the Universe. Until a thought 
is thus clothed other minds cannot read it, and it is 
to the super degree of consolidation in the astral 
aura of the mental planes, which an ancient and 
oft-repeated thought has known, that in some cases 
makes of a thought as perfect a creation, so far as 
objectivity is concerned, as if it were a reality, 
not merely a powerfully-developed demonstration 
of a thought form. 

The length of time during which a thought has 
remained in the astral element will be the measure 
of its power over other minds, and of the period 
during which it will possess the power of survival. 

Hence a world born first into the astral element 
would show great tenacity in the forms it possessed 
at birth, and, in adding new forms from exterior 
mentalities, would still preserve the integrity of 
its original possessions. Again and again we have 
the reappearance upon the Earth's mental plane 
of images of thought creations from the astral 
stage of the world's history ; and the more the 
mediums develop on to the astral plane, the more 
will these survivals from a prephysical stage tend 
to confuse the records of Earth's present evolution 
with those of that past, giving many suggestions 
and curious examples of ancient wisdom that were 
appropriate to the conditions of an astral world, 
but are simply misleading when applied to a physical 
condition. 

One of the most perplexing problems of medium- 



ORIGIN OF THE EARTH 45 

ship to-day is the confusing effect produced by the 
ability to read those old astral records without a 
corresponding power of distinguishing between 
merely thought creations and the records of actual 
verities, i.e., things that have the stamp of truth, 
as distinct from the myriad interpretations of the 
original germs of truths that have arisen from the 
concentration of many minds upon that truth . in 
the effort to comprehend its full meanings. 

In regard to the records of the Atlanteans, of 
which so much has been made, those records are 
not the story of the true astral race and their 
world, but of a people incarnate on Earth in the 
conditions of matter. 

They never were astral anything, except in that 
the}' had affiliated to the Elemental-astral Plane, and 
to the Serpent-men, whose domain it is, and thus 
they had acquired power on that plane, and a share 
of the very mixed conditions of the astral element 
found there ; more especially the ability to absorb 
the vital fluids from the " Grey Land " and the 
astral light that illuminates it, and shows all its 
myriad illusions. 

The wisdom of the Atlanteans is tainted at its 
source, and no valuable knowledge is gained by the 
study of their records ; rather are they as will-o'- 
the-wisps that beguile the psychic student into 
the marsh lands and the noisome quagmires of the 
worst conditions of the Elemental-astral Plane. 

This plane is called the Elemental-astral Plane 
because it is the region in which the elementary 



46 PROBLEMS OF MEDIUMSHIP 

stages of both astral and physical entities unite. 
It is not purely astral anything, but only the 
embryo condition of the astral element as found on 
our planet ; the elemental stage of the astral 
planes which in their higher evolutionary expression 
in the spirit-spheres of the hereafter form, in con- 
junction with the physical element, the Trinity of 
Elements for our planet. 



CHAPTER III 

THE ASTRAL WORLD : ITS ENDING 

A thought-created world projected from the 
mind of its Creator into the astral element, would 
travel to the Plane of Expression to find there its 
evolution into responsible individuality, and would 
there encounter the great forces of good and of 
evil that control the evolution of the higher soul ; 
forces which would then exercise tremendous 
sway over the destinies of a mentally-created 
world, and be dominant factors in its evolution. 

In the vivid zone of expression every latent 
possibility of a moral or of an immoral character 
would awaken into power with a force which physical 
man, who is only half a " mental " creation, can 
scarcely imagine. Mind is reality in relation to 
temptation, and matter is only the enveloping 
and restraining impediment which mind encounters 
in a physical world. 

As the statue which Pygmalion fashioned and 
prayed that the gods might endow with life, 
represented his ideal of beauty, and nothing more, 
while it remained the material reproduction of 
his thought creation, but, on receiving a soul 
became thereby a responsible and independent 
unit, destined to reap the harvest of its own desires 
and actions, and to experience all the emotions that 

47 E 



48 PROBLEMS OF MEDIUMSHIP 

belong to the higher soul, so would the thought- 
created world, born onto the Plane of Expression, 
and endowed by that birth with a soul, become 
from that moment of birth the arbiter of its own 
destinies, and no longer a mere reflection of the 
contributions from other mentalities. 

In that world will power would be the dominant 
factor in controlling its activities. Concentration 
upon a " desire " until it had become crystallised 
into definite form, and in its turn an influence over 
other individualised mentalities, would be an art 
studied and taught ; as would its necessary co- 
relative intense positiveness and determination to 
dominate and control the will force of others, with 
that highest development of all, the reasoning 
powers of the intellectual faculties themselves. 

Men can scarcely conceive the splendour of the 
intellectual power, the dominant force of individual 
" desire/' and of the " will " to accomplish that 
desire, which a great leader or a teacher of the 
astral race would develop in the struggle of mind 
against mind, and positive will against positive will, 
good desires against evil, and evil against good, 
during the long period of evolution of the astral 
world. There would be far more opportunity to 
develop all these in the one individuality, because 
life in the astral world would be continuous in 
the one stage, and the consolidating and preserving 
nature of that element would give an apparently 
perpetual existence to everything that found 
expression in it. 



THE ASTRAL WORLD 49 

Men would live for ever, while the astral world 
lasted. It is from the astral race that the idea that 
man might possess himself of a body that would 
live for ever has been derived. 

The splendour of the conceptions of the finest 
intellects of the astral race, the perfect ideality 
and beauty evolved by their art, cannot be repro- 
duced by mortals now in the denser materials of 
the Earth's present era ; but to the eyes and the 
ears of the mystics, and of the artists, the writers, 
poets, musicians, visionaries of all types, the 
sensitive films of the recording medium of the 
astral plane give reflected images of many of these 
astral creations. 

Colossal also would be the power of their grosser 
conceptions, and the thought imprints of their 
fierce desires, and of those strong, all-mastering 
passions that belong to the soul, and not to any 
element in which the soul finds its individual 
expression. 

Good and evil are eternal factors of evolution ; 
their influence over the individual soul never 
ceases. Conquest of evil on one plane only opens 
the path to still stronger, more subtle, temptations 
in a higher, more spiritualised condition. 

If physical man owes some of his finest inspir 
ations to the mental records left by the astral race ; 
he also owes them some of the most pernicious and 
degrading suggestions that have ever cursed a world 
with the far-reaching influence of a corrupt know- 
ledge, and a wisdom tainted with falsehood and 



50 PROBLEMS OF MEDIUMSHIP 

with the grossest perversion of the most sacred 
truths. Who that ventures into the conditions of 
the astral plane now in order to glean wisdom 
from its records can presume to say what is valuable 
in that old and superseded compendium of wisdom, 
and what is only vile and misleading, as a will-o'- 
the-wisp that lures with its false light those who 
follow it into the marsh lands and foul slime of the 
Elemental-astral Plane ? 

The astral element is not the vehicle for the 
generation of new forms of life ; its function is to 
consolidate and preserve, and the astral race would 
not be parents of other astral men and women. But 
the power of creation belongs to the soul, and the 
astral race, as possessed of souls, would also possess 
the power of creation, only all their offspring would 
be of the intellect, and pass onto the mental planes 
in the form of works of art or thought creations, 
typifying their aspirations and their desires. None 
of these astral records of their creations would be 
truly immortal, for immortality is given by God 
alone, and nothing that is created into an element 
by any mind, save the Divine Mind, possesses that 
immortality. 

As a race they would be barren, and all union 
between the masculine and feminine representatives 
of that race would be on the mental planes, and 
give only added power for mental demonstrations. 
It is a fact that an excess of the astral element 
in the aura of a mortal tends to divert all creative 
power onto the mental planes, and to cause a 



THE ASTRAL WORLD 51 

consolidation of the individual personality, with 
a resultant aversion to the physical side of life, 
and a repulsion towards any form of union. Self- 
centred, self-sufficient, and isolated individuality 
marks the cold, negative unresponsiveness of the 
true astral temperament where it is untouched by 
passion ; a petrifying, unprogressive condition 
that clings to what it has and what it is, and 
shrinks from any suggestion of change in any 
direction. This is the crystallising influence of that 
frozen diamond in the heart of the star — a barren- 
ness that clings to its condition.* 

In direct contrast to this there is the astral 
temperament that is so receptive, so absorbent, 
nothing that has once come within its focus of 
attraction escapes again. This is the astral of the 
lower polarity, and it makes of its subject an 
octopus, the many arms being the multiple powers 
it possesses of amalgamating with both higher 
and lower entities of rnind and matter. 

It is this lower personality of the astral tempera- 
ment that reflects the desire of the soul, magnifies 
and multiplies the force of the temptation, and 
crystallises that desire into a giant impulse that is 
not readily dissipated again. This also is a barren 
condition, because the all-absorbent lower soul 
of the astral is a vampire individuality that builds 
up itself with everything it can absorb, and has no 
desire to give life or form to anything beyond itself. 

The astral race were characterised by the 

* See Introduction. 



52 PROBLEMS OF MEDIUMSHIP 

prevalence of these extremes. Thus, on the one 
hand, we find in their records laudation of the celi- 
bate life of pure negation, and innumerable secret 
teachings of how desire could be stimulated, power 
be attained for its gratification, and all the fruits 
of united mentalities absorbed and retained by the 
vampire himself for the building up of his own 
personality. 

The pure and holy are shown in their lofty 
isolation as standing apart from the active life of 
their world, lost in mystic contemplation ; while 
the gross and evil, on the other side of an impassable 
barrier, are pursuing their quest for knowledge 
and desires for self-gratification and power ; culti- 
vating their dominant will force, and imposing 
their dogmas on other people ; exercising despotic 
control in all things over the weaker and more 
negative personalities ; grasping at selfish power 
and imperial magnificence, and filled with ambition 
to be as the gods. 

There is always a condition between two extremes, 
and in the astral world there were, no doubt, many 
whose wisdom had no taint of self or evil, and whose 
holy aspirations were translated into active lives ; 
but they have left no records on our astral plane, 
because their records have passed away with them- 
selves into the higher polarity of the true spirit 
realm. We may seek in vain to come into affinity 
now with these higher astral spirits and their 
histories. 

The histories recorded on the astral planes belong 



THE ASTRAL WORLD 53 

to spirits of that race who were not freed from 
attachment to their Earth, and who carried with 
them, as mortals do now, the spiritual records of 
their lives, which remain affiliated to the spirit, 
and are reflected from the spirit on to the astral 
aura of the Earth. 

.When the spirit passes away entirely from the 
astral plane, or the Earth's spheres, these records 
will fade out and pass away also. Wherefore 
we may know that for every record man can read on 
that plane now there is an imprisoned spirit in some 
one or other of the myriad conditions of our astral 
planes. 

This is another reason why it is not desirable for 
mediums to affiliate themselves to that plane, nor 
to the spirits whose life records they are studying. 
Those records are a legacy from the lower polarity 
of the astral world, the higher soul of it having passed 
entirely away. 

Owing to the consolidating properties of the 
astral element, the men and women of that evolution 
would not require to renew their bodies daily 
with a supply of food, and would draw from the 
elements around them, by the force of their will 
power, all that was required from time to time. 
The natural sustenance of the body of an astral 
man or woman being drawn from the atmosphere 
around, the power of thus absorbing, would be 
likewise a natural attribute of the astral body, 
just as the power of assimilating physical food 
is an attribute of physical man. 



54 PROBLEMS OF MEDIUMSHIP 

That power of absorbing from the atmosphere 
the vital essence in it remains an attribute of the 
astral body now. 

The idea that man in a material body might 
redevelop and use again this latent power in the 
astral envelope to supply himself with mental force, 
and even physical vitality, and obtain a wealth 
of ideas and of healthy elements thereby, is a sug- 
gestion from some spirit of the astral planes who 
knows how youth may be renewed, the body built up 
again, the mental powers enriched by absorbing 
from persons in the flesh that life and those mental 
possessions which are much more easily absorbed 
when in a created and vitalised condition as part of 
some mortal's equipment than when drawn from 
any other source of supply. Such knowledge is a 
revival of the old wisdom of the astral era, but it 
does not belong to the physical scheme of evolution. 

Although, as a race, the astral people left no 
offspring to perpetuate their type, it does not 
follow that they were sexless, nor that the passions 
which belong to sex, and the ideality and beauty 
of a pure and selfless love held no sway over their 
emotions. Sex is an attribute of the universal 
soul ; it has many more phases of expression than 
that of mere physical functioning. The astral body 
of Adamite man responds most powerfully to the 
sex emotions, and that circumstance would indicate 
that the astral world was no less dominated by 
them than this world is, but on the mental plane, 
and in conditions that do not reproduce themselves 



THE ASTRAL WORLD 55 

now except by reflex action from the survival on 
the astral plane of that astral body man has in- 
herited. On the mental plane Love finds expression 
in the most poetic and beautiful interpretation of 
that passion ; but it has also on that plane found 
possibilities for suggestions of such selfish, licentious 
debasement of the same passion that no one need 
wonder that persons of weak will, negative 
character, sensitive temperament, and predis- 
position to vicious tendencies, who have developed 
on to the mental plane and into affinity with its 
astral conditions, have become obsessed by the 
suggestions of impurity that have found records 
there as well as those giving the ideality and the 
beauty of pure love. 

All the arts would dominate in that world ; 
music, in particular, w T ould be its possession. The 
astral fluids, being of so light and ethereal a nature, 
so receptive and responsive to the emotional 
side of life, and fluids having the peculiar property 
of conveying sound w T aves, these astral fluids would 
most swiftly and accurately receive and distribute 
all over that world the waves of Divine harmonies 
that radiate from the heaven world of perfected 
souls. It would likewise absorb and reproduce 
those weird inharmonies, those wild, mystic, grief- 
haunted strains that float up from the far outer 
regions where the lonely hells, that are the habi- 
tations of the souls who are in the prison realms 
of their sins, drift on the edge of Chaos. 

Every emotion the soul can know has its 



56 PROBLEMS OF MEDIUMSHIP 

expression in the language of music. A people of 
transcendent intellectual powers and vivid re- 
sponsibilities would possess the musical faculty 
in a high degree, and in giving response to every 
throb of sorrow or ecstacy of joy, which those sound 
waves conveyed to them, would intensify and 
multiply their own capacity for suffering or for 
happiness. For them there would be far more 
powerful temptations than assail Adamite man — 
strange as that statement may sound — because the 
material element deadens the power of sensation 
and the acuteness of the mental consciousness, 
and acts as an opiate in dulling the power of the 
mind to suffer or to enjoy. 

At the beginning of its evolution, the astral 
world would be an ideal creation with every 
possibility of good or of evil development. At the 
end of its evolution it would show what that astral 
race had made of those possibilities for themselves. 
Good and evil having dominated in turn, there 
would be two halves to that era of evolution, both 
developed into strong individualities in the people. 

Of the half that was of the higher soul, and all 
that had found expression in the domains of the 
higher polarity, there would be the spirits ready for 
transition to spirit life. 

There would likewise be a residue who were not 
perfect in their era of evolution ; some because 
they were too undeveloped in character, though 
not evil in any way. In spite of the long years 
given to the soul to evolve its character, there are 



THE ASTRAL WORLD 57 

always some persons who are unprogressive by 
temperament, and prone to imagine they have all 
eternity to experiment with, and who prefer to 
enjoy the present rather than labour for the future 
of progress. Many influences keep individuals 
from growing in the spirit, and all such would be 
left behind when the end of the astral world 
arrived. 

There would also be by far a greater number 
who had sunk themselves into the conditions of the 
lower polarities by the degradation, the selfishness, 
and the evil of their lives, and these would have no 
heritage at all in any higher evolution of their 
world. With all their intellectual power, their 
gross passions, their tyranny, their greedy, grasping 
at power and unscrupulous robbery of everything 
possessed by ' the weaker members of the com- 
munity, would give them no affinity except to the 
lowest conditions of evolution in any element. 
The spirit world of the astral race w r ould have no 
place for these. 

That Astral World, with its power of renewing 
everything at will, was, par excellence, the world of 
youth ; for its sages never grew old, nor felt the 
decay of their mental powers creep over them 
as men do now. At the end of its cycle of evolution, 
those people would possess all the brilliance of 
youth and the accomplishments of age. The 
ardour in pursuit that belongs to youth, and the 
keen appreciation of attainment that comes with 
maturity. That world, like its people, would 



58 PROBLEMS OF MEDIUMSHIP 

know no season of decay and change, no autumn 
for their year, but only perpetual spring and 
summer. There would be no fast creeping shadow 
of a change to foretell the coming at last of a night 
that was to end for ever that radiant day of 
power. 

And yet, with so clairvoyant a people, 
there must have been some who could see the 
approach of some great event, and there must 
have been for many a consciousness that a catas- 
trophe was overshadowing their future ; a vague 
fear of that change which was to terminate with 
cataclysmic suddenness that era of everlasting 
youth for this people who worshipped youth and 
all its pleasures. But, in a world where death had 
never entered, and separation was unknown, 
death and separation would be the two conditions 
they could least comprehend, and so to the Astral 
World, as to the people of Sodom and Gomorrah, 
the end would come in the midst of their lives of 
activity and of pleasure. The higher world of the 
astral people, refined into its last stage of ethereality 
in that element, would float away, like a soap 
bubble, carried by a gentle wind, and all its 
ethereal spirits with it ; while the lower world, 
separated from it and released from the restraining 
influence of the higher soul polarity, would sink 
down into the lower plane, and begin to go lower 
and lower as its spirit counterpart was carried 
farther and farther away. 

That would be the first death and separation 



THE ASTRAL WORLD 59 

the astral race had ever known, and for many it 
would be a final parting. 

The age of this Astral World at the time of its 
dissolution would not be very great, for it was a 
young world, and everything would evolve rapidly. 
Nevertheless, the cycle of that evolution would 
extend over a very considerable period of time, and 
still be comparatively short when measured by the 
physical stage of evolution. 

The length of time which a planet will take to 
evolve into maturity in any element may be pre- 
dicted with great accuracy, because the planet itself 
always belongs to the lower polarity of the elements, 
and, as the law of the lower soul polarity is the law 
of automatic sequence throughout the progress of 
evolution, the rate of that progression can be gauged 
with the same certainty a tide is known to ebb 
and flow, and may thus be predicted with accuracy, 
because there are no mental factors to interfere 
with the automatic routine of evolution. The law 
of change, which is a law of the Universe, places 
a limit upon the time a world or an individual 
may take to pass through a given stage. When 
that limit is reached the change becomes inevitable. 

At the end of each cycle the ripened fruits of 
that era are gathered into the spiritual storehouse. 
The immature are held by the angels in a state of 
suspension until ready to be sown anew in the 
conditions of Earth life ; while those fruits that 
are too utterly destroyed to grow anywhere again 
are left where they have fallen, and to the release 



60 PROBLEMS OF MEDIUMSHIP 

which death will finally bring, although death may 
not come to them for long years. 

In the end of the Astral World, and the sinking 
down of its nature soul into the conditions of the 
lower polarity, all those unprogressed, or those evil 
men and women of that era, would sink with it. 

The astral element is of the nature of a fluid 
that etherealises into the thinnest of air at the Plane 
of Expression, and forms planetary globes that are 
quite objective to even a limited degree of clair- 
voyance on the astral plane. Cloud lands, with 
lakes and seas of translucent purity, form dwelling- 
places for the aerial beings, who belong to the 
astral era, and are attaining the power of expression 
in that element. 

At the extreme lower pole the astral fluid has 
become very heavy, though still transparent. It 
is even denser and less penetrable than water. 
Thus, in sinking away from the Plane of Expression, 
the dying Astral World would be immersed in ever 
more and more consolidated fluid ; withering as it 
sank, deprived of all that radiant youth in which 
the astral people had so greatly rejoiced, and which 
had gone with the spiritual essence of the higher 
soul that had given it. 

Aged and withering now were all those astral 
men and women who had failed to attain immor- 
tality with their higher world ; chained were they 
all to the mummifying shell of a dead world that 
continued to shrink and shrivel up, as an apple 
shrivels when it dies, yet holds still within its core 



THE ASTRAL WORLD. 61 

the vital seeds of new entities yet to be born. 
The increasing pressure would cause a greater and 
ever greater hardening and consolidation of the 
shell, or husk, of the Astral World, and thus give 
increased protection to those astral seeds. 

To the unfortunate people this sinking dow r n of 
their world would be akin to the sinking of a ship 
in mid-ocean, carrying every one down with it. 
Thejf could not escape, because their spirits were 
imprisoned in the astral bodies they had worn so 
long and preserved so carefully, and made so 
essentially a part of themselves that they could 
know no existence apart from them. The very 
nature of the astral element would prevent them 
from dying as rapidly as material men die when 
drowning. An over-developed body of the astral 
plane now shows a similar and terrible tenacity 
in its hold upon the spirit. As they sank down and 
down, imprisoned in that astral shell, they would 
experience all the horror and anguish of a people 
overtaken by a world's catastrophe ; a flood that 
was engulfing them all while they were held helpless, 
caught in the meshes of their entanglements to the 
lower polarities to which they had affiliated, and 
still more firmly held by their vices and their 
cherished sins, that were all as strands of rope 
tying them down. 

At last the mass of consolidated fluids — like 
ice-floes that exist at the lower pole of the astral 
element— would crush the shell of that lost world, 
and all its people would drown in very truth, 



62 PROBLEMS OF MEDIUMSHIP 

immersed in the deep waters of oblivion that are 
at the extreme negative astral pole. Extreme 
negation is oblivion to all things. 

The story of a flood that covered the whole 
material Earth, and destroyed every one, save 
Noah and his family, has a counterpart in the 
records of the extinction of the Astral World by a 
flood that left no survivors. 

That the people of Noah's day were submerged 
in a flood from which he, with his family, were 
saved by Divine command, does not negative the 
possibility of a similar termination for the astral 
era, because that era refers to quite a different 
phase of the planet Earth's evolution. 

In the earlier ages of the present phase of our 
Earth's evolution, the astral conditions would be 
more dominant than now, and those lost spirits 
would be more closely in touch with mankind, 
and from those spirits might come the account of 
the creation of a Universe that emerged from dark- 
ness and chaos, yet in the account failed to give 
that astral period as a distinct era of progression, 
because of the great difficulty encountered in trying 
to present a picture of a world so different from that 
of Adamite man's. All accounts agree in the 
leading features, and that it was at the command of 
God that Creation, in relation to our planet, was 
accomplished. 

The law of change that brought the end of the 
astral era will in due course bring an ending to the 
present material era ; and, whereas the first world 



THE ASTRAL WORLD 63 

ended in a flood because the astral element is a 
fluid, this — the second world — will end in fire, 
because the element in which we are evolving is 
the physical element and its extreme expression is 
fire. The lower pole is a vast lake of molten matter, 
resembling the interior of a volcano. 

Between the condition of our Earth to-day, and 
the fiery lake at the lower pole, there is a density of 
matter, beside which the apparent solidity of the 
Earth's bulk is like that of a honeycomb compared 
with quartz rock. 

Wherefore our Earth will never reach the fiery 
lake in complete form. Long before it arrives 
there, it will be pulverised as an eggshell would 
be ground to powder between millstones. The end 
of the Earth for man will come with the falling of 
the rocks, the rending of the mountains, the 
crashing down of the great buildings men have 
reared in the pride of their power over material 
things ; and there will be the final engulfment of 
the fragments in that lake of fiery mud. 

Where will the lost spirits of our era be in that 
last day ? 

Our Earth at present is on the Plane of Expression, 
and the physical globe is our envelopment. The 
conditions of that Plane of Expression are so far 
from those at either extreme pole that men find it 
difficult to realise the exceeding density of matter 
possible at the lowest degree, or the exquisite 
ethereality that prevails at the highest degree to 
which matter becomes sublimated ; nor can 



64 PROBLEMS OF MEDIUMSHIP 

material man easily comprehend the still more 
subtle nature of pure spirit as seen in perfected 
evolution through matter where it reigns supreme. 

The seers of old were haunted by visions of a 
world that had been destroyed by a flood, and that 
would be consumed by a fire, so that all living things 
upon it would call upon the hills to fall upon them 
and the seas to cover them, and end the anguish 
and horror of their fate. Does this not show that 
the soul would survive when the material Earth 
had perished, and that man has always had warnings 
sent to him, foreshadowings given him that there 
is a period set to the time in which the immortal 
ego may dally with the fate that must surely 
overtake the Earth he loves so well ; a limit to the 
time he may spend, either as mortal or as spirit, 
in evolving his spiritual personality ; an inexorable 
Nemesis that will overtake him, and appoint those 
future conditions to which alone the degree of 
development of his individuality that he has 
attained by then will give him right of access. . 

Every doctrine and every ideal that has come 
down through the ages and survived the vicissitudes 
of time and the expansions of men's thoughts, 
has its origin in some germ of truth ; not always a 
perfectly comprehended truth, but still truth in its 
essential statements. 

The idea that an end of the world would come in 
a day and at an hour when men looked not for it 
has its essence of a great truth, and its explanation 
in the law under which the higher soul, in spite of 



THE ASTRAL WORLD 65 

its power to govern its evolution and choose its 
path of progression, comes, nevertheless, under the 
operations of the purely automatic laws that govern 
the evolution of the entities of the lower soul that 
have no such choice ; automatic laws that are as an 
inexorable fate, bringing the end of the evolutionary 
process of all in the lower polarity at a given period 
that is the climax of the evolution of the nature 
realm, and brings its ending when the purpose for 
which that nature realm existed is accomplished. 

The higher soul is dependent upon the lower soul 
for its means of attaining full expression in any 
element, because objectivity belongs to the domain 
of the low T er soul, and is attained and retained only 
when the higher soul has conquered the element 
in which it would express itself in demonstrative 
form. The soul that wastes its higher powers and 
loses its opportunities, fails to attain any such 
conquest. 

Thus, although the higher soul has apparently 
an absolute power of choosing its methods of 
evolution and its periods of activity, the higher 
soul is yet so deeply involved in the fate of the lower 
soul, that is its partner, and is so limited by the 
limitation of its inferior, they are both finally 
involved in the same fate, unless the higher soul 
has become the true master of its own destiny. 

As surely as the Astral World ended suddenly, 
so will the present world of Earth end suddenly 
before the evolution of all the souls w r ho have 
lived upon it is accomplished. 



66 PROBLEMS OF MEDIUMSHIP 

Where will all those spirits go ? What will be 
their fate ? Will they not be the lost souls of 
whom the theologians speak ? Will there be for 
them any other era of progression in connection 
with our Earth, and with all the friends they will 
have to leave, despite all the love, and the longing, 
and the bitter tears that will be shed on both sides 
of that barrier — that wall between the higher and 
the lower states that will separate them one from 
the other at last ? 

Earth will have passed then through both the 
subordinate elements ; there will not be, as with 
the Astral World, another condition before the final 
mergence in the spiritual state takes place, nor the 
chance that was given to the astral laggards, who 
were not wholly evil, of redeeming the lost time 
even at the eleventh hour. Who can say where 
those who are left this time will find another place 
of habitation in the wide Universe ? 

Some persons believe that such spirits will in- 
carnate upon some of our companion planets, 
that, in fact, there are persons here now who have 
come from other planets. 

That is a very moot point that cannot be decided, 
but is it well to risk losing all those dear comrades 
of our Earth life here, or to trust to so uncertain 
and so alien an alternative, so distant a hope, in 
order to go on in some evil or perverted path just 
now, or to join a band of fellow-loiterers anywhere ? 



CHAPTER IV 

THE PRE-NATAL STAGE OF THE EARTH AWAITING 

REBIRTH 

THE LAW OF POLARITY AND THE LAW OF SEX 

The evolution of each era of a planet's progression 
has been likened to the blossoming of a tree, 
followed by the harvesting of the fruit gathered 
from it. The fruit produced each season by the 
Tree of Life gives the results of each era of 
evolution in succession, and differs in character, 
in colours, and in the elements, or combination of 
elements, that have dominated in each particular 
era. 

The Astral World and its people represent the 
completion of the planet's evolution through that 
element, and the fruits garnered from that era 
still give the seeds of fresh entities on their planes. 
When the present era is completed the physical 
races, with the fruits garnered from their stages of 
evolution, will represent that element, and there 
will be a third and spiritual era, with a spiritual 
race, who will carry forward the evolution of this 
planet into the complete Trinity of power. This 
new and spiritual race are not yet due to arrive 
upon the Earth, nor will the conditions of the 
Earth be sufficiently spiritualised to admit of their 
evolution upon it for long ages yet to come. Our 
Earth is far too material, and will require to 

67 



68 PROBLEMS OF MEDIUMSHIP 

ether ealise much more visibly before any spiritual 
race can enter upon life here.* 

The planet's nature-soul constitutes its immortal 
unit, and represents the individuality of the 
collective whole. 

This nature-soul passes, at the termination of 
each era, from element to element, always in the 
lower polarities. In every era of evolution the 
nature-soul has its counterpart in a vast parent 
root, from which, at each stage, innumerable seeds 
are sent forth into independent existence. 

If man in thought created a plant, and then 
embodied it in the mental element, his plant (if 
perfect) would possess this seed-bearing property, 
but the conditions of the element, in which the plant 
had found expression as an individual unit, would 
regulate the form in which the seeds from each 
season's sowing would appear. 

In the Astral World everything derived from the 
seeds of the parent root found expression on the 
mental plane, and to create on that plane was the 
natural process. It is not the natural process in 
this era ; therefore, to create on that plane alone 
brings certain abnormalities that will be considered 
later on in another book of this series. 

The soul of anything, as the immortal spirit of 
that thing, contains within itself the power of 
germination and of growth. No person in any stage 
of existence can give the soul — that comes from the 
Divine alone — and all that anyone can do is to 

* See Vol. II : Chapter on New Race. 



THE PRE-NATAL EARTH 69 

create a form from the particular elements the 
individual controls. The creation of a form that 
shall be more than an agglomeration of materials, 
collected together as one might make a piece of 
furniture, requires that there shall be the negative 
and positive forces united on whatever plane the 
objective " form " is to be created. 

This is the law of polarity, which is also the law 
of sex, because sex may be described as the 
individualisation of polarity. 

The evolution of the sex functions proceeds 
from its lowest expression — as the purely mechanical 
action and reaction of the opposite characteiistics 
of the vital forces in nature, as they flash from 
positive pole to negative pole, and vice versa, 
continually — to that which is the highest expression 
of the same of attraction and response upon the 
mental planes ; and then to the conditions where 
the mechanical action and reaction are controlled 
by the intellectual faculties at the will of the 
individual and by the moral consciousness, and 
are inspired with ideality and the emotions called 
love. 

Sex operates in response to the higher or the 
lower laws of the Universe, according to whether 
the individualities it affects are in the higher or 
the lower polarities, and it is everywhere in evidence 
throughout the Universe, linking all creation 
together in a long chain of living entities, from the 
low r est to the highest. It finds its etherealisation 
in the perfected dualities of the angels, and its 



70 PROBLEMS OF MEDIUMSHIP 

origin in the Divine personality of God, the 
Supreme Father of Creation. 

The Catholic Church embodies its conception of 
the apotheosis of the feminine element in creation 
in the Virgin Mother with her Child. The Greeks 
and Romans had their goddess. The Hindus 
have the sacred cow — a far less elevated conception, 
because the cow belongs to the lower polarity, 
and all the beautiful symbology with which the 
Hindus decorate the image of the cow does not 
alter the fact that it is an inferior representative 
of the feminine element. 

The idea, prevalent in the East, that the feminine 
is the inferior, and belongs primarily to the nature 
world, is at the root of the doctrines that eliminate 
sex from conditions above the Earth plane, and 
teach celibacy as the ideal condition of purity — 
that negative, non-creative condition — and show 
the masculine type as the supreme survivor. The 
Mohammedans go farther, and deny the woman 
any soul above that of the nature realm. 

In perfect innocence, which is also complete 
ignorance, we have the stage of infancy, in which 
sex exists, but is dormant ; it exercises no influence 
over the impulses, because it has not been awakened. 
This is the negative condition that perpetuates 
infancy, and the dependent — and, in a measure, 
the merely absorbent — condition that does not 
generate life, but only receives it. 

In depravity we have the sex impulse as the 
mere slave of passion ; it is then a merely selfish 



THE PRE-NATAL EARTH 71 

vampirish instinct, void of all the grace that love 
imparts, and void also of the purifying, elevating 
attributes of true ideality, with the resultant 
submergence of self which reverence and adoration 
of the beloved bring. 

In love, that is worthy of the name, and not a 
veneer over the baser passions, there must be the 
substitution of another's welfare and happiness 
in place of the desire for self-gratification, and an 
altruism that raises true love above the appeal of 
passion. 

There is likewise in true love its corollary in 
the awakening of the parental instincts and the 
love of offspring, with a desire for all that is most 
selfless and holy in the parental relations ; that 
which is the essence of family life, and which makes 
of that relationship the gateway to the true power 
of spiritual creation hereafter, with the formation 
of links that bind families and nations together 
in the bonds of brotherhood — first as members 
of family groups, and in universal kinship at last. 

In the sentiment of love, as applied to the sex 
passion, we find both a purifying flame and a 
consuming furnace. 

In the furnace of the passions, the very fierceness 
of the desires causes them to consume themselves, 
and burn away the dross of the merely selfish 
passions. 

In the higher expression, as a vivifying flame, 
love kindles all creation into life and being, and 
illuminates the depth of the sex nature with the 



72 PROBLEMS OF MEDIUMSHIP 

light of ideality and all the arts, and gives the 
warmth of deep emotions in place of fierce, senseless 
passion. 

Among the Greeks Cupid's torch was its symbol. 
That which was mere impulse becomes the love 
emotion, and emotion is the music of the soul, 
the mysterious breath of the Divine element in 
passion, which stirs the chords of the human heart, 
as the wind stirs the strings of an aeolian harp, 
and draws weird, sweet strains of music from 
them. 

When Love is of the lower soul alone, his lighted 
torch kindles only a consuming furnace ; yet even 
in that furnace Loves power still triumphs, for it is 
his flame that consumes the passions by the very 
fierceness with which it burns away desire / and 
when love triumphs and the soul emerges, the blind 
slave of mere sex impulse is for ever chained. 

In the absolute purity, which knows no sex, 
we have the condition of barrenness on every plane. 
It creates nothing, and is dependent for its progress, 
and then its growth, on the creations of others. 
This is true of the mind even more than of the body ; 
we find no originality of thought or of activities 
in persons, or in religions, or in philosophies which 
eliminate the creative functions. They follow the 
routine mapped out for them by their founders, 
who gave the first " thought forms " round which 
all that is afterwards attracted cluster. They 
add no new light to the original flame, and they 
tend to become petrified and obsolete, enshrining 



THE PRE-NATAL EARTH 73 

what they possess in a frozen condition that brings 
an increasing impotence. 

All birth and all rebirth bring the subject under 
the law of polarity and its higher expression as 
sex, for all types of life must have parent lives 
to give the new form in which the subject is to 
find personal expression. 

The form which the soul wears is always a separate 
part of the individual ego. Many and varied as 
are the forms that the soul may wear, their develop- 
ment or their destruction is always governed by the 
laws of the lower polarity of each element ; while 
the evolution of man's soul proceeds under the 
higher laws alone. 

It has been said already that all the rainbow- 
hued elements that radiate from the outer poles 
of the Universe are the visible expression of the 
magnetic forces in Nature's realm, and that the 
power generated by these mighty dynamos give 
birth to the stars and suns, the planets and the 
satellites of the solar systems, and all that teeming 
life of the lower soul ; rendering the Universe 
objective, and supplying the mechanical aspect of 
evolution. It is on that outer Zone of Life that 
those magnetic forces mingle in blind, irresponsible 
demonstration of their colossal power.* 

To this zone of lower life forces the shell of the 

* Note. — This magnetic essence of the lower soul feeds only the 
lower creations, and cannot supply the needs of the higher 
soul ; on the contrary, excess of this magnetism is inimical 
to the higher development. 



74 PROBLEMS OF MEDIUMSHIP 

dead Astral World would finally be attracted by the 
strong influence that the positive life-force exercises 
over all negative things. 

A grey, withered husk would be all that was left 
of the Astral World as it lay for long at the negative 
pole ; and to that grey husk would cling still the 
spirits of that past era ; a little group of souls 
unable to break away from that focus of attraction. 

So long as the withered husk lay at the negative 
pole of the astral element, the petrifying nature 
of that condition would preserve it from dissolution, 
for the astral fluid embalms all that it holds. 

This preservation of the dry husk, and the focus 
of attraction it formed for the lost souls, would 
make of it an icy prison-house for them, and its 
stultifying conditions would cause a frozen sleep 
to be the state of everything held in that astral 
shell. 

Time in relation to the Universe cannot be 
gauged by earthly standards, but throughout all 
the nature realm there are periods of rest, of pause, 
in the activities of evolution — a negative condition 
between each positive stage. 

The influence that would disturb the dreamless 
slumbers of those lost souls, and their mere shell of 
a vanished world, would be the operation of one of 
those universal laws that had brought change 
and destruction to the astral Earth, and was now 
to bring a fresh condition to the seeds of all those 
fruits grown in the period of the astral era. 

Upon the winter of oblivion that reigns at the 



THE PRE-NATAL EARTH 75 

negative pole, there would be cast the fore- 
shadowings of an awakening from sleep — the 
approach of a springtide in which all the dormant 
seeds of spiritual lives, which possessed the power 
of growth in a new condition, w T ould awaken to 
fresh possibilities of progression in the new 
conditions. 

Not all of the germs of souls from the astral era 
were capable of a new evolution. There were 
souls who were so corrupt in their mentalities, 
so warped in their moral perceptions, so wedded 
to vile conditions, that for them no fresh power 
of germination existed. The coming of a springtide 
could not give ability for renewed growth in any 
form, but only produce a spurious activity of the 
kind possessed by the parasite that lives on all 
the lives to which it can attach itself. 

There were many such parasites left as an 
undesirable legacy from the astral stage. The 
effects of these survivals will only be known when 
the Astral-elemental Plane is seen in all its many 
aspects. 

The approach of a change in the season of 
evolution would cause the fluids of the astral 
globe to vibrate and ripple into many wavelets ; 
even as a still, land-locked lagoon begins to feel 
the approach of the incoming of a tide from the 
ocean. The mirror of the astral plane would 
experience the ruffling of the placid magnetic 
conditions so long prevalent. Stronger and stronger 
vibrations would quiver through that frozen 



76 PROBLEMS OF MEDIUMSHIP 

realm, and all those dormant astral shells would 
begin to sway and drift, rocked by the waves of 
astral ether. 

Those waves would flow out from the negative 
pole in long streamers of white flames — liquid, yet 
a fire in essence, and of a silvery, shimmering light. 

On these white flames the dead things of the 
astral world would be lifted up and carried out 
on to the vivid, many-coloured region of light and 
life that envelops the Universe with a rainbow halo. 

There these derelicts would drift, as rudderless 
boats, held in a group by their attraction of affinity. 

They would not drift for long. The flaming sword 
of the Destroying Angel is in the magnetic fires, and 
its stroke separates the living germs of the soul 
from the dead shells of past existences. It gives 
death to the things that have exhausted all future 
possibilities, and to the imprisoned soul it brings 
release. 

These long streamers of light from the astral 
globe — clear as silver at their inner core, and 
dazzling white at their outer edges — would begin 
to gather volume and power, and to reach out 
farther and farther from the astral pole in a mass 
of white flames, spreading away towards a red and 
orange glow of light, seen as when the first light of 
the dawning day appears on the eastern horizon. 
A wonderful light, far flung and brilliant, so that 
it illuminated even the dark background of that 
Ocean of Chaos long before the crimson flames from 
the physical sun-centre could be discerned. 



THE PRE-NATAL EARTH 77 

Those two brilliant lights, that were the magnetic 
elements of life in all the nature realm* — the one 
so colourless, so pure and transparent ; the other 
deep crimson and orange in hue — would sw r eep 
towards each other with stupendous force, alter- 
nately approaching and then receding in waves 
of magnetic fires, but always approaching nearer 
and nearer ; harmonious to each other, and yet 
inharmonious at the same time. 

Anyone who has seen a forest fire, when one 
line of flames is being carried towards another 
line of flames by the changing of the wind, must 
have noticed that, as they approach each other, 
they sweep forward as sentient things, and grapple 
and twist and twine round and round in a column 
of leaping flames that rise like a pillar of fire, 
which, by its strong magnetic attraction, draws to 
itself all the lesser flames, and sucks them into that 
waving furnace till there is nothing left to consume ; 
and then the pillar of fire sweeps onwards, 
gathering power or dying down as it passes ; 
finally sinking into a dull red glow, and at last into 
darkness. 

In this meeting of the magnetic fires of the astral 
and physical elements, the colossal pillar of fire — 
that' gives life and also destroys it — would be seen 
recurring periodically as a stupendous exhibition of 
creative and also of destructive power on the 
regions of the lower polarities. 

The physical fires alone are the destructive 
element ; but, cooled and stabilised by the astral 



78 PROBLEMS OF MEDIUMSHIP 

fluids, they give life and form to all that finds 
immersion in that blended magnetic essence. 
Hence the seeds of life carried from the astral era, 
in the envelopment of the astral shells, would now 
find a new means of expression and fresh possibilities 
of germination as they were swept into the vortex 
of the physical element and the physical globe, 
where our solar system is existing. 

In their combination, the physical and astral 
elements give the impetus to germination in all the 
embryo forms of life, all seeds of future entities 
in those worlds that are yet to be born, and which 
are merely drifting on the magnetic waves of that 
outer Zone of Life. 

In their separation each element carries away 
on its magnetic tide those soul seeds which are in 
affinity to that particular element. 

In the furnace of fire created by the blending of 
the elements, the flames would burn up and consume 
all those dead husks in which no life remained to 
respond to the creative impetus, so that those astral 
shells that were truly dead things would be at last 
destroyed, and release the spirits so long held 
prisoners to them. Thus the lost souls of the astral 
era would lose all ties to their kindred and their 
world, and be swept away with the Earth's seeds 
and carried into the physical globe by reason of 
their affinity to the Earth itself. There all would 
find expression in a new era of evolution, and in 
a new vehicle for development. 

Thus the planet Earth, which was the seed from 



THE PRE-NATAL EARTH 79 

an astral-evolved world, would be the parent root 
into which the seeds of all physical forms of life 
would be grafted, and the nature soul of the planet 
Earth would emerge once more into individuality 
as a twice-born unit, possessed of the heritage 
from its astral evolution, and dual in all its relations 
to both physical and astral elements. 



CHAPTER V 

THE EVOLUTION OF THE FOUR ELEMENTS AND OF 
THE SPIRITS OF THE ELEMENTS 

The Earth, drawn into the solar system, would be 
a distinct unit, but only in an embryo stage of 
evolution, and would be ready to begin the develop- 
ment of all its many types and forms of life, and 
the varying degrees of materiality that belong to 
the physical conditions. 

In speaking of an embryo world and its germ of 
a soul, the idea of something comparatively small 
is conveyed till we remember that every term is 
relative to the environment of that which it 
describes ; and, as applied to the finite planet 
and the vast Universe, the word soul germ should 
convey the idea of an enormous unit, not merely a 
minute entity. 

In the pillar of fire the nature soul, and all 
belonging to its polarity, would receive a new 
supply of vital essence, sufficient to carry the Earth 
through its physical evolution. 

All the astral seeds from the nature realm would 
be pure germs of life. No sin and no corruption 
belong to the nature soul ; decay and death come to 
nature only through exhaustion of the vital essence, 
and disease in the nature world is caused by the 
poisoning on the elemental plane of the elements of 
life by entities belonging to the higher type. The 

80 



EVOLUTION OF THE FOUR ELEMENTS 81 

evils that men do translate themselves into con- 
ditions of corruption that breed poisons on the 
elemental plane, and are sucked back into material 
forms and the Earth conditions by the plants, 
and the animals, and man. 

Nature itself is a negative ; the laws of Nature are 
the laws of a machine. It is man who has given 
good and bad conditions to that negative. 

Nevertheless, evil being a component part of 
the nature realm now it is necessary to recognise 
its existence, and desirable to trace it back to its 
source in the influence exerted over the elemental 
plane by the survival from the astral era of certain 
spirits of very corrupt and evil propensities. 

The great root bodv of the Earth would produce 
an infinite variety of seeds, and these would give 
their types of life to fructify the new Earth. Those 
types would be of astral origin ; and, as the earliest 
stage of all embryo life reproduces first the astral 
condition, all those beings who belonged especially 
to the astral types would be the first to find 
expression in the physical element. 

Air and water belong to the astral element. In 
combining with the gases of the physical element, 
they would assume tangible expression in that 
element, and form the clouds and the seas ; and in 
the air and in the water all those types of beings 
belonging to those elements would evolve from 
their embryo conditions into semi-material, semi- 
astral entities. Fire and earth belong to the 
physical element, and are very antagonistic to air 



82 PROBLEMS OF MEDIUMSHIP 

and water. They also would hold their seeds of 
living entities that were not dense enough to 
belong to matter, but would be from types of astral 
seeds evolved through a stronger combination with 
matter. 

The spirits of these four material combinations 
of the three primal elements would be rightly 
called " spirits of the elements" but wrongly classed 
among the elementals, which are not spirits at all ; 
they belong only to the elemental stage, and do not 
survive it. 

Each of the four elements — Air, Water, Fire, 
Earth — as they completed their evolution into 
material conditions, and etherealised from matter 
again into the spiritual counterparts, would draw 
away from the central core of the Earth, 
and separate from each other, to form spheres of 
their own element again. The spherical form 
being characteristic of all the elements in their 
separate individualities, each element would form 
a globe, and the four are seen as a cross with the 
circle of the Earth plane, on which they all mingle, 
as the centre of the cross. 

This inter-blending of the elements takes place 
on what is known as the Elemental-astral Plane, 
and gives the man who can affiliate to that plane 
power in manipulating these elements — a very 
dangerous power to acquire. 

These globes are the retorts into which the 
spiritualised essences of the four elements ascend 



EVOLUTION OF THE FOUR ELEMENTS 83 

from the Earth plane. The Earth plane is the 
distilling vat, and its aura is the radiation of those 
finer elemental essences as they separate again, 
and float each to the globe of its own element 
that naturally form the dwelling-places of the 
spirits of the elements. They are a part of the true 
spirit realms, and not of the elemental conditions, 
because each of the four expressions of the Earth's 
elements now has completed its evolution into a 
perfect type, and represents the first fruits from the 
germination of the astral seeds sown in the material 
Earth. 

It is entirely erroneous to call these spirits of 
the elements of Earth now " astral spirits/' because, 
while they are directly derived from astral seeds, 
they have passed through envelopment in matter, 
although only in its finest conditions in the elements. 
These spirits are an intermediate class between the 
astral and the physical eras of evolution. They 
are not within the sac of the elemental plane 
at all, but in a spiritual realm, evolved by 
themselves, and have each their distinct spiritual 
condition. 

They derive nothing from mortals, and are 
never in any sense parasites, nor to be classed as 
dangerous to man. 

All these spirits should be visible to clairvoyance, 
without development on to the elemental plane, 
because they are spirits, and therefore the eyes of 
man's spirit should see them if there is any affinity 
to their types. Fairies, elves, nymphs, dryads, etc., 



84 PROBLEMS OF MEDIUMSHIP 

they are all representative of separate eras of 
the Earth's evolution in the physical form. 

The exceeding grace and beauty of the astral 
type, its fine mentality, are reproduced in the 
higher spirits of this class ; those who are found 
near Earth, and living in the materialised conditions 
of their element, are the stragglers, the loiterers, 
the childish and foolish, the left-behind because 
unprogressive members of their races. Once 
again there is to be noted the operation of that 
law of evolution, which makes the completion of 
development in the nature realm the end of that 
era for the spirits whose period of evolution was 
thus fixed. 

The Ancients, in describing the intermediate 
spirits, made great errors, because, in starting 
from the premise that only man of the Adamite 
race, and his type, had a soul, or was immortal, 
they confused these beautiful spirits with those 
elementals who are not spirits, but only the 
vitalised elements, from which forms are being 
built up on every plane, and of every type of life, 
from the mineral kingdoms, vegetables, animals, 
and man. 

The number of fairies, elves, etc., is becoming 
fewer and fewer, because they are finishing their 
evolution, and going on into their rightful condition 
in their own spirit realms. 

As semi-astral spirits, their auras have highly 
reflecting properties, and when they are in groups, 
dancing round a fairy ring, or in the ruins of some 



EVOLUTION OF THE FOUR ELEMENTS 85 

old castle, or on the green sward in the moonlight, 
the radiance of the moon rays, illuminating the 
auras of the fairies, does create a cloud of light 
around their dancing, floating forms, and reflect, 
as in a mirror, the fairy palaces, the lovely lakes 
and sylvan woods of their one-time dwelling-places 
on Earth. Those persons whose souls are pure, 
as the souls oi children are, and whose eyes are 
clear-sighted on the spiritual planes, do see these 
ethereal spirits of another race than that of Adam, 
not as mere dreamers see, but because they have 
in themselves some affinities to the astral elements 
and the spirits of that evolutionary period. 

The antagonism of one element towards another 
keeps each sphere of these four as distinct and 
separate entities, although on Earth a degree of 
interblending is compulsory to them. A body, 
built up entirely in one element, enjoys that 
condition, and lives and functions in it ; but it is 
repelled by an antagonistic element, such as fire is 
to w r ater. It is because man on Earth, and in the 
spheres belonging to his line of evolution, has a 
body composed of all the four elements that he 
feels so acutely the excess of any of them, and 
can enter into affinity with all ; each balances 
the other. 

Elementals are not representative of any era, 
but belong to all ages and every stage. They are 
of all types, and possess no definite type of their 
own. They may be seen with the aid of a very 
low T type of clairvoyance, because they belong to 



86 PROBLEMS OF MEDIUMSHIP 

a plane that is almost material, and begin in the 
lowest form of life, reproducing all types and every 
class up to that of the animal — the final end of the 
nature world. There certainly is no spirit in any 
of them ; no real consciousness of any kind or 
degree. 

The embryo Earth, in developing, would attract 
to itself vast quantities of physical materials and 
magnetic essences ; and, as soon as the evolution 
of its four elements was completed, the seeds 
of all the forms of life that began to germinate in 
this new season of its progression would partake 
less and less of the purely astral types, and become 
more and more clumsy reproductions ; for the 
dense, insensitive matter that began to fill the 
astral moulds would distort their delicate substance, 
and destroy much of their grace and beauty. 
The early physical mammoths were very ponderous 
and grotesque from this cause ; and a good many 
variants on the original types resulted, till the more 
spiritualised condition of the physical element 
began to adjust the balance, and give the physical 
type more prominence ; thus, much that came from 
the Astral World failed to reproduce itself, giving 
only that astral envelope, which is a part of 
everything on the Earth now. 

In its natural relation, simply as an envelope 
that absorbs and blends the magnetic conditions, 
and elemental substances of those conditions, with 
the spirit body on the one side and the material 
body on the other, the astral body is a useful, 



EVOLUTION OF THE FOUR ELEMENTS 87 

harmless, and necessary part of the human anatomy, 
and of the whole of the lower nature realm ; and 
its presence has shortened the process of evolution 
in matter, and given the types of a high condition 
of civilisation to the present Earth as a starting 
point. 

The conditions of cloud and mists, that preceded 
the gathering of the waters into their own 
boundaries, and then the appearance of dry land 
before even the animals and the birds gave animated 
life to the material Earth, might well have been 
the stage of evolution for the intermediate races 
of spirits, and been followed by the appearance, 
on the rapidly consolidating Earth, of the fully 
materialised forms of life in the sequence given 
in the Bible story. 

To say that they germinated in the physical era 
from seeds derived from the conditions of an 
astral stage, is not in conflict with the account of 
the rapid and even sequence of evolutionary progress 
given in the Bible, for all growth would be rapid in 
a world so rich in physical vigour, and endowed 
with the types left by the former stage. 

All its conditions of life being fully developed 
into matter, the Earth might be said to begin its 
independent existence with the appearance of 
Adamite man. 



CHAPTER VI 

THE EARTH AS A MINIATURE UNIVERSE 

THE CONTRASTING DIFFERENCES BETWEEN THE 
EARTH AND THE GREAT UNIVERSE 

The Earth, being a fully-developed unit, would 
represent in itself all the elements contained in the 
great Universe, but only as an infant at birth repre- 
sents the future man ; the character was yet to be 
evolved and the history written. 

The Nature laws control the lower polarity of 
a world ; but man, as representative of the higher 
soul, controls the evolution of its characteristics, 
and writes its history in conjunction with his own, 
and even changes many of the Earth's natural 
features in pursuit of his aims and ambitions. 

While our Earth as a miniature universe repre- 
sents the elements of the Trinity of power, there 
are, however, certain differences between the 
Earth and the great Universe which it is well to 
note here. 

To begin with, our Earth is a dependent body ; 
not the source of life to others. Its activities are 
controlled by its superiors. 

In the Universe all life begins at the Divine 
Centre, and separates into two lines of evolution, 
under the higher and under the lower polarities. 



EARTH A MINIATURE UNIVERSE 89 

The line of evolution of the lower polarities 
commences its path of evolution at the outer poles, 
and travels up to the Plane of Expression by a 
succession of enlargements, of refinements, and of 
individualisations that gradually give form and 
character to that which was nebulous at first ; 
and on the Plane of Expression everything that has 
assumed form — that is, a distinct type and 
character that give individuality in a measure — 
should find attachment to the line of evolution of 
the higher soul. 

If the unit of the lower soul fails to find affiliation 
to the higher soul, it goes back and down to the 
negative lower pole once more. There it is drawn 
onto the outer Zone of Life, and absorbed into the 
pillar of fire, freed from its dead elements, and 
sent once more upon its pilgrimage to the Plane of 
Expression till it has had the experience of 
evolution in each of the three primal elements. 

Failure to attain affiliation to the higher soul 
in any of these pilgrimages of experience, indicates 
such absolutely featureless negation that the unit 
is virtually a dead thing ; and, being thus dead and 
absolutely negative, it becomes absorbed by the 
Ocean of Chaos. 

This is the law of evolution of the lower polarity 
and of the lower soul that law governs, and it applies 
to all the elements in their lower-soul expressions 
as the nature world. The emergence of the unit 
of the nature realm into a condition of a positive 
type and a definite individuality, puts it upon an 



90 PROBLEMS OF MEDIUMSHIP 

intermediate plane, with the possibility of attachment 
to the higher soul, but never of amalgamation with 
it, save as a subordinate appendage. 

Extreme negation belongs to the conditions of 
the lower polarity and the lower soul. To sink 
into this condition means ultimate extinction. 
Excessive passivity ends in negation, and where 
mediums allow themselves to become so passive 
that their individuality is dormant and submerged, 
they are on the downward path that leads into the 
lower polarity. Their higher soul is thus caused 
to sink instead of rising ; they may descend into 
the conditions of the nature realm, and become at 
last submerged in them, losing their individuality, 
and ending in an excess of negation that will lead 
to ultimate extinction if the process is not arrested. 

This law of the lower polarity is the appointed 
means for returning the units of the lower soul 
realm to the Zone of Life at the lower poles, where 
the violent activities of the fiery flame are destined 
to awaken all that is capable of being awakened, 
and to separate the living from that which is so 
negative that it is already dead. 

The law of continual return to the lower pole, 
or to a condition within its influence, is a law of the 
nature world that has no mental influences to alter 
its automatic routine. 

The law of rebirth does not mean a return into 
the same element again and again, but birth into 
each element successively till all three have been 
experienced. This is a law of the Universe. 



EARTH A MINIATURE UNIVERSE 91 

The Higher Line, or evolution of the higher 
soul, begins its evolution at the inner pole, assumes 
density in whatever element its pilgrimage begins 
(it does not always begin in the astral globe), 
and finds its complete envelopment in that element 
on reaching the Plane of Expression ; at which 
point the higher soul enters into a provisional 
affinity with the nature soul on some world that 
has attained refinement equivalent to the degree 
of density, in the element, possessed by the higher 
soul that seeks individuality and personal evolution 
in that world. 

From this point the higher soul should return 
to the Divine Centre. The laws of the higher 
polarity hold the soul in attraction to the Divine 
Centre, but the influence of the mental faculties, 
that belong to the higher soul and prevent the 
automatic operation of any universal law, gives the 
higher soul the choice of two paths of evolution ; 
the lower soul has no choice, and follows only one. 

The path for the higher soul brings return to the 
Divine by a longer or shorter pilgrimage, according 
to the progressive or unprogressive character of 
the individual, but return without any descent 
into the lower polarity beyond the Plane of 
Expression. 

The outer path means descent into the conditions 
of the lower soul and the lower polarity, and the 
length of time the higher soul may remain in what 
is virtually a condition of imprisonment in the 
realm of the nature world depends on the soul 



92 PROBLEMS OF MEDIUMSHIP 

itself, not on any arbitrary law that would entail 
a. routine of experiences for all souls. 

The return of a soul of the higher polarity into 
a body of the flesh is a possibility that belongs only 
to the physical element and to the conditions of 
matter ; the astral form never renews itself once 
it is destroyed, and cannot again attach itself if 
complete separation is effected. There was no 
death in the Astral World, and no putting off or on 
of its envelopes ; but only the thinning or the 
thickening of the form worn by absorbing extra 
elements, or by evaporating them again. 

The assumption of a fresh form of matter by a 
soul that has been separated entirely from its 
earthly body by death belongs to the conditions 
of matter, and is the law of reincarnation, i.e., 
the return into the body of the flesh. 

Acceptance of the one law does not imply the 
endorsement of all that is taught by some schools 
under the other law. 

The law of rebirth is a law of the Universe.- The 

law of reincarnation is a law of the physical element 

only, and belongs to the conditions of the lower 

polarity of that element. 

* * * * 

In considering the differences between our 
miniature universe of the Earth and the Great 
Universe, it must be remembered that our Earth 
is a planet and a dependent whereas the Great 
Universe is the supply source for myriads of 
dependents. 



EARTH A MINIATURE UNIVERSE 93 

I. In the Universe the three elements are seen 
as separate globes that only at the inner poles and 
the Divine Centre are truly blended in one. 

In their separated conditions the elements afford 
opportunity for evolution in each in succession. 
In their blended condition they represent the living 
entities that have progressed through each and 
attained perfection. 

On the Earth planet, which now contains the 
three elements, but is evolving through the physical 
as a special experience, the separation of the 
elements does not exist, although the physical is 
the dominant one, and the purpose of the whole is 
to preserve that unity and develop all to spiritual 
perfection, that spirituality may become the 
dominant note. 

II. As the planet Earth is floating in the physical 
globe the region that surrounds its outer envelope 
is that of the physical element, and not a sea of 
Chaos as shown surrounding the Universe, and the 
higher pole, that of the Earth's spiritual regions, 
does not point to an inner circle of generative life- 
force, but to^that spiritual globe of the Universe. 

The lower pole of the Earth universe points to 
the Sun as its focus of attraction and source of 
material life. 

These two poles of the Earth's universe are 
fixed points in the sense that they do not alter 
their relative positions in regard to the Sun as one 
focus and the spiritual globe as the other. They 



94 PROBLEMS OF MEDIUMSHIP 

control the conditions of the Spirit Spheres and of 
the material ball of the Earth, but they are not 
affected by the rotation of the earth-ball on its 
axis, nor its changes of position as it travels round 
the Sun, although the Earth's Spirit Spheres are 
carried round the Sun attached to the Earth, and are 
an inveloping succession of infinitely ethereal films. 

The attraction of the Sun for all that is of the 
physical element as one point of focus, and the 
attraction of the globe of the spiritual element for 
all that is of the essence of the spirit, as the other 
point of focus, causes a dual force of attraction to 
be exercised over the Earth's universe, and pro- 
duces an elongation of the outer envelope that 
encloses the whole Earth and Spirit Spheres. Thus 
the Earth universe is not of a circular shape, but 
resembles an egg ; the narrow end of the egg being 
nearest the Sun is the place where the material 
ball of the Earth lies at the lower pole of the whole 
egg. At the wider end the true Spirit Spheres are 
seen. The apex of this end radiates spiritual life, 
and also absorbs it from the distant and invisible 
spiritual globe of the great Universe. 

Spiritual life is always passing out from that 
radiant apex of the Earth's spheres ; and as it 
radiates it mingles with the physical element in 
which the Earth universe is floating, forming a 
protecting cloud of spiritual and physical essences 
that is like a zone of protection, and a veil between 
man and the intense heat of the physical fires 
radiating from the sun-centre. 



EARTH A MINIATURE UNIVERSE 95 

The difference between the nature of the higher 
polarity and the lower polarity may be epitomised 
thus : — 

The one generates and radiates its own power. 
The other attracts and absorbs the power generated 
by something else. 

The higher soul is always the supplier. The 
lower soul is always a dependent. 

While man is in the material body he is in the 
realm of the lower polarity, and depends for his 
material existence on something other than him- 
self. All lower nature does the same. Not till 
man passes out of the conditions of the lower 
polarity can he be possessed of the power that 
belongs to his higher soul and create his own supply. 

As the entities of the nature world ascend in the 
scale of power, they begin to generate more of 
independent life force. Man, standing at present 
between the higher and the lower polarities, may 
either descend into the inferior condition as a 
mere absorber and dependent on others, or he may 
ascend by becoming more and more independent 
and productive, and the generator of vitality, 
instead of a borrower. He may radiate power 
and attain spiritual individuality, which is the 
true life force and gives immortality. 

The Earth planet, being only partially developed 
as an individuality, has spirit spheres that are 
incomplete, especially in the higher polarity. 
The great mass of individualities are only attaining 
the higher conditions, and many centuries must 

H 



96 PROBLEMS OF MEDIUMSHIP 

still elapse before those highest spheres are 
perfectly evolved. 

Seen from the Earth, there is a veil over the 
conditions of those highest spheres. 

III. In the great Universe the higher and the 
lower polarities are separated, and, at the same 
time, united by the vivid zone of expression, on 
which both mingle as on a neutral ground, a region 
on which they may find union, and through that 
union pass either upwards or downwards. 

In the Earth universe the two polarities are 
separated, and never united, by a dark sea, which 
disintegrates and destroys everything that enters 
it ; a region that is void of life, and an exact 
contrast to the vivid Plane of Expression, since it 
extinguishes individuality in every unit that 
enters its dark waters, unless that unit is so fully 
affiliated to the higher polarity that it can pass 
through it as light passes through a glass screen. 

In the great Universe the neutral region is formed 
by the suspension of the activities of the higher 
and the lower polarities, and is characterised by 
the vitalising effects that union between two 
opposites produces, when the antagonism of the 
opposition gives place to mutual attraction, and 
produces an exchange that results in the formation 
of new types from the admixture of old ones. 

In the Earth's miniature universe the negative 
region between the two polarities is a realm in 
which Death reigns supreme ; a zone of negation 



EARTH A MINIATURE UNIVERSE 97 

where types become extinct and no new ones are 
evolved. Its extreme negation causes, not only a 
pause in the activities of both polarities, but a 
chaotic condition of disintegration akin to that 
which exists in Chaos. 

Before man appeared on Earth this negative 
region was simply a dividing zone, marking the 
limits of the creation of the nature realm, the 
point where evolution of the lower soul ended, 
unless a higher influence came to attract and draw 
upwards the entities of the lower soul polarity. 

The law of life is the law of spiritual evolution, 
and implies eternal progression into higher and 
ever-higher developments. 

That law imposes no return into the inferior 
conditions, except as a voluntary act ; but, until 
the soul of Adamite man crosses the gulf filled by 
the dark sea of negation, it is not of sufficiently 
advanced power to make the choice of its own 
future destiny. All that is in the lower polarity, 
whether of the higher or the lower soul units, 
comes under the automatic laws that govern the 
evolution of the lower soul ; and these laws cause 
everything in the lower polarity to return to its 
own elements again and again, releasing at each 
return the spiritual essence, and all that has become 
affiliated to it, and is thus its possession. Thus 
each period of immersion of the unit should give 
additions to the spirit form, built up in etherealised 
matter, till the full complete form is automatically 
evolved independently from any mental activities. 



98 PROBLEMS OF MEDIUMSHIP 

It is thus that the spiritual spheres of a planet 
are built up till they have attained the conditions 
of ethereality, in which they are fit for translation 
into pure spirituality as the dwelling-places of those 
higher souls who have evolved upon the planet as 
perfected spirits. 

It is thus that the spirit of an animal, or of a 
plant, is also built up and etherealised till it can 
pass into the higher condition as an appendage to 
some spirit of the highest types. 

The law that governs this automatic process of 
evolving a spirit body does not, however, give any 
passport to the spheres of the higher polarity ; 
on the contrary, that law returns the individual 
unit to the same conditions again and again, 
until the operations of another law of the higher 
polarity comes into force to arrest that automatic 
return by attaching the individual unit to some 
entity belonging absolutely to the type of the 
higher soul, and thus draw T s the lower soul unit 
away into the higher polarity. 

It is a mistake for the ego that belongs to the 
type of the higher, which is the man type, to follow 
that automatic line of evolution, and return again 
and again into the body of the flesh and the con- 
ditions of matter. There is very great danger 
that the automatic sequence of such repeated 
incarnations will cause the man type of soul to 
become imprisoned in the elements of the nature 
realm till it loses the power of separating from them 
and escaping the operation of their laws. 



EARTH A MINIATURE UNIVERSE. 99 

The law ot reincarnation is realty a law of the 
lower kingdoms, and is the law governing the evolu- 
tion of the inferior types, and limiting their power of 
evolution to the automatic development of spirit 
forms. How man, who belongs by right of heritage 
to the kingdoms of the higher soul comes under 
the operation of this law of the lower polarity is 
told in the story of Eden and of Adam and Eve ; 
their temptation by the Serpent, and their fall 
from the conditions of the higher polarity to those 
of the lower soul and its plane of evolution. 

The great error that was made by the old 
occultisms, and ail those old religions that have 
incorporated the wisdom of the Serpent in their 
system of teachings, was in affiliating to that 
elemental-astral plane — from w r hich alone re- 
incarnation is possible — so that the conditions of 
that plane became so interwoven with the lives 
and the development of those races who adopt 
that line of teaching, that they became imprisoned 
by a network of entanglements between Earth 
life and the elemental conditions. Thus they could 
not escape into the true spirit spheres, but were 
returned again and again into Earth life, and from 
Earth life back, at death, into that Elemental- 
astral Plane : with its strange life of myriad 
unrealities and bewildering illusions. 

Why should men to-day be so foolish as rivet 
the chains of those old errors round their souls 
merely because a powerful body of occult teachers, 
founding their teachings on old religions and old 



100 PROBLEMS OF MEDIUMSHIP 

philosophies, present an attractive and plausible 
scheme of occultism to the seekers after com- 
munion with the spirit world ? 

The law of eternal progression — that is the law 
of the great Universe — resembles a mighty wheel 
that revolves always in the direction of onward 
progression, with no return to an inferior state, 
but on our Earth planet this law of progression is 
varied by many periods of retrogression. 

Some persons contend that such retrogressions 
are in reality another form of progression, but 
that is only partly true, for, while experience is 
gained on the one hand, other experiences that 
would have been also of value are lost. There is 
a time-limit even to the stages of progression, and 
those who fail to attain a certain standard of 
evolution when the inevitable end arrives must 
pass on with all their imperfections on their souls. 
There is a law that imposes this limit upon every 
unit of creation, and brings annihilation to those 
entities that remain in the inferior polarity after 
that period has been reached. 

It is the operation of this law that ultimately 
effects the elimination of those types that are 
not worthy of survival, because they are evil and 
corrupting, and thus leaves good at last as supreme 
in the survival of the individualities that find 
expression in the spiritual evolution of a planet. 

The law of the spiritual evolution of the higher 
soul is the law of eternal life, but it has its counter- 
poise in the law of death. 



CHAPTER VII 

THE ANATOMY OF THE EARTH 
ITS VARIOUS REALMS AND SPHERES 

The accompanying chart shows the miniature 
Universe of our Earth planet as a whole. (See 
Frontispiece.) 

It will be observed that the Earth, as a dark 
brown ball, is surrounded by a ring of brownish 
grey. That is the region of the Earth-bound spirits 
of most physical degree of evolution, and is also 
the region in which the life of material evolution 
is in its formative stages. It is the most dense 
expression of the Elemental-astral Plane, and has 
so much of the material elements in its composition 
that it forms a barrier against the inflow of the 
astral fluids, which play a quite minor part in the 
activities of its creative forces, although sharing 
in them. It also resembles a wall of matter, 
opposed to the conditions of the astral regions of 
the Elemental-astral Plane. 

The extended pinacle of that plane is seen as 
rising above the grey-blue regions that envelop 
the brown Earth plane ; and sometimes suggest 
mountain lands in the sky. In reality that pinnacle 
is like the stump of a dead tree, whose roots 
spread out and travel round the upper circles > 

101 



102 PROBLEMS OF MEDIUMSHIP 

of the Earth's mental region, and are directly 
above it. 

That dark stump, or cone, is the sinister side of 
the legacy which the Astral Era bequeathed to 
Adamite man. It forms a negative region, where 
all activities are suspended and perpetual night 
reigns. It is surrounded by what appear to be 
cloud lands, travelling in long, ascending spirals, 
round the dark cone, and so ethereal that they look 
like veils falling over the dark centre. At the 
apex there is a crescent of white and silvery mists ; 
that is all that now remains of what was once the 
true astral plane of our present Earth. The so- 
called Astral-elemental Plane is, in reality, so mixed 
with the material emanations from the Earth that 
the purely astral element is only obtainable in that 
pale crescent land. 

Surrounding this astral-elemental envelope, and 
dividing the lower polarity from the higher, there 
is everywhere the dark sea described in the last 
chapter, as resembling the Ocean of Chaos. This 
dark sea even flows between our Earth ball and its 
spirit spheres. At the point that is farthest from 
the rays of the sun the dark sea is very wide and 
deep, but where the direct rays of the Sun reach 
the Earth it is only a narrow line, like a river. 

Beyond the dark river the spirit spheres are 
seen as narrow belts of light that are, in reality, 
part of vast globes, each one greater than the one 
it encloses, and extending from our material ball 
of Earth (enclosed in the astral-elemental sac) 



ANATOMY OF THE EARTH 103 

to the seventh envelope, which is the highest of 
our spheres. 

It is not the purpose of this book to give an 
account of the spirit spheres, except in relation 
to the Earth and Astral-elemental Plane, but it 
must be explained that those narrow belts of spirit 
life all lie in the lower polarity and constitute that 
spirit realm, which is easily reached from the Earth 
life, and by spirits who, even when they have 
attained the Seventh Sphere, are still only in the 
polarities of the nature world. 

A reference to the chart will show how this can 
be. {See Chart : Higher and Lower Polarities.) 

The wide realms of spirit life that are in the higher 
'polarity can only be reached by spirits who have 
developed out of that lower polarity. A spirit 
who enters the Second Sphere in the lower polarity 
can, if he is progressive, develop into the con- 
ditions of its higher polarity, and so pass upwards 
without leaving that sphere. He can attain the 
highest condition in it, or he can simply remain 
where he first arrived. 

Every sphere must be attained in its higher 
polarity before a spirit can enter upon that 
encircling zone that includes all spheres, and gives 
the power of communion with the whole of our 
miniature Earth universe. 

The desire to reach the higher polarity of the 
spheres directly from the Earth life, instead of 
entering those narrow belts, has led men in all 
ages to attempt to do so by means of those long 



104 PROBLEMS OF MEDIUMSHIP 

spirals of ascent through the Astral-elemental Plane 
that appear to afford so swift a road, so obvious a 
stairway, to the dividing line of the two polarities 
— an illusion, because there is no passage there, 
only an exit into the dark sea, and extinction of the 
individuality in it. 

A reference to the chart will show the Earth 
as a brown ball, surrounded by a greyish brown 
region, almost a fogland. This is the place where 
the Earth-chained spirits live amidst the astral- 
elemental replicas of the things they possessed in 
life. The higher regions of this fogland are much 
brighter, and the spirits who live there see the 
reflections, both of earthly and of spiritual things, 
and appear to be surrounded with the creations 
born of their desires, as well as of the things they 
accomplished while on Earth. 

The colour shows the spiritual relations of each 
condition, colour being a spiritual expression of 
a stage of spirit life, but it does not imply that 
everything in that region is brown and grey to the 
objective sight of the material eyes. It requires 
the development of the spiritual senses to discern 
the colours of each condition of spirit life. Many of 
the spirits who are Earth-bound are as much of 
the material Earth still that they do not see the 
spiritual colours of their surroundings, nor their 
true spiritual conditions, but only the reflections 
of many colours, and the images of many things 
thrown down upon their own auras, and enveloping 
them in a halo of many-coloured lights and many- 



ANATOMY OF THE EARTH 105 

illusive appearances. This is especially true of 
spirits who are in the upper regions of that Earth 
plane, and subject to mental influences. 

Enveloping the Earth plane, there is a series of 
blue-grey realms that show a silvery shimmer 
in their highest regions, and a deep steel-grey 
with brown tints at their lowest. This is the 
mental plane of the Earth, and in it are many 
spirits who were of too developed mentalities 
to remain nearer the Earth, but too feeble, as 
spirits of the true spiritual development, to pass 
into that Second Sphere which is the first of those 
conditions that are really representative of spirit 
existence. 

This mental region reproduces the earthly 
surroundings of the spirits in it with great fidelity, 
and gives an added power of fresh creation on the 
mental planes at will. But nothing thus created 
remains if once the mind relaxes its concentration 
upon the object desired: all melts away like things 
built up in smoke. Hence spirits who come from 
this realm may truthfully say that in their experience 
the spirit world is a mental creation only, and has 
no tangible existence apart from mind. They do 
not realise that they as spirits are still only in 
a part of the Astral-elemental Plane, and have not 
seen the true spirit world at all. If they have been 
leaders of thought on Earth, they will repudiate 
such a suggestion ; nevertheless, that is the 
explanation of their experience of the future state, 

Most extraordinary and fantastic are some of 



106 PROBLEMS OF MEDIUMSHIP 

the lands found within the Astral-elemental Plane, 
but these are only reached by persons who have 
affiliated to the astral side of nature. The majority 
who pass into an Earth-bound state see only 
those brownish-grey, bluish-grey, and rainbow-hued 
regions ; and conditions akin to Earth life. 

As the spiritual perceptions awaken, these spirits 
begin to be more and more conscious of the real 
nature of their surroundings, and see as visions 
one after another of the blots and stains, which 
their sins or their errors have left on the spiritual 
replicas of their earthly possessions, and on the 
robes their spirits ought to wear in the higher life. 
They become conscious that they are only in an 
Earth-bound body, and that they only see the 
surroundings of an intermediate state — that which 
Roman Catholics call the Purgatorial condition of 
the soul. 

If they are earnest, and anxious to atone and 
to progress, this becomes the starting-point from 
which they will spiritualise themselves out of the 
Earth plane and into affinity to Spirit life instead. 

The spirits in an earth-bound condition all derive 
their sustenance from the elements in the Earth 
itself, but in a more and more refined state, as they 
progress farther and farther from the Earth ball. 
Everything in the very material region that en- 
velops the Earth — so closely, indeed, that the 
two conditions are intersphered, and passage down 
into the Earth itself is possible for some spirits — 
is a reality, not an illusion, nor a thought creation, 



ANATOMY OF THE EARTH 107 

as in either that light grey, or in that blue-grey 
realm. The things are a reality because so strongly 
materialised and joined to the material stage of 
existence. 

The envelope, or body, of an earth-bound spirit 
close to Earth is so thickened with material elements 
that the astral conditions and astral spirits on 
that plane are no more visible to this type of 
earth-bound spirit than they are to mortals who 
are strongly entrenched in material bodies. 

Enclosing all that earth-bound region there is 
the Astral Envelope, and within it and intersphered, 
even though invisible to normal clairvoyance, 
there are a series of refinements of the astral- 
elemental conditions, and many lands and strange 
abiding-places that belong to the astral line of 
evolution. Strange places and strange conditions, 
where the illusions of the astral element are so 
numerous and so perfect, it is difficult to convince 
those who affiliate to this realm that they are not 
beholding the wonders of the spirit lands, and the 
great and beautiful spirits who control the spirit 
lands. 

This strange astral-elemental region is the creation, 
not of spiritual evolution, nor of the working out 
of spiritual laws of progression, but from a perversion 
of them. 

All this strange realm, together with the Earth 
and its earth-bound regions, is contained with the 
astral sac, and separated from the next condition 
of life by the dark sea. It all constitutes the 



108 PROBLEMS OF MEDIUMSHIP 

First Sphere of life; matter and spirit existing 
together. 

The Second Sphere marks the stage at which 
spirit begins to dominate and etherealise into con- 
ditions in which matter will be no longer an 
impediment to the desires of the spirit ego, but an 
added power attained. 

Once the Second Sphere is entered there is no 
return to a lower condition, but a continual pro- 
gression. It is only within the confines of the Astral- 
elemental Plane, and its envelope, that the law of 
reincarnation operates ; entrance into the Second 
Sphere closes the door on reincarnations. 

The fine mentalities who have reincarnated 
have all come from the higher astral-mental planes 
within the elemental-astral sac. Highly-developed 
mentality does not necessarily confer spiritual growth, 
nor give a passport to the Second Sphere, for many 
who are in that Second Sphere are inferior in their 
mental development to others who stand without 
its portals, because they have failed to attain the 
development of the spirit body, which alone can live 
in the true spirit world. The reasons for this 
apparent paradox have been the subject of studies 
that have produced this book. 

The spirit who has entered the Second Sphere 
cannot return into a body of the Earth again, but 
he can control those who are in the body of the flesh. 
He does it from the distance of the sphere he is in, 
and it is only the reflection of his appearance that 
he throws down upon the aura of a sensitive, and the 



ANATOMY OF THE EARTH 109 

projection of his mentality, and only on the mental 
plane of the Earth and the mind of a medium can 
his thoughts be impressed. Hence the difficulty of 
direct communion with these spirits, and the explana- 
tion of why so many attempts are made by spirits 
who are among the earth-bound to give their aid 
in transmitting messages from the true Spirit 
Spheres. Hence also one of the reasons of so many 
disappointments and failures, so much confusion 
and so many errors : for the conditions of that 
Astral-elemental Plane are always a barrier between 
man and all conditions above it. 

The seven spheres that comprise our Earth 
Universe give the seven notes of the octave in music. 

The five intermediate conditions between the 
seven spheres are half-tones that come between the 
full notes and blend them. The semi-tones can be 
used either to raise or lower the pitch of the full 
note, i.e., as a sharp to raise the pitch, or as a 
flat to lower it. 

These seven full tones and five semi-tones have 
been called the twelve spirit spheres or planes, but 
this is an incorrect description, because the Spirit 
Spheres are only seven, with the five as intermediate 
conditions. 

These seven spheres each contain expansions of 
their tonalities that give the repetition of the 
octave in higher and lower positions of their har- 
monies. 

The laws of vibration that govern the communi- 
cation between spheres depend for their accuracy 



110 PROBLEMS OF MEDIUMSHIP 

upon the harmonious response to the laws that 
govern the musical scale ; and the infinite varieties 
of harmonies that can be evolved, the limitless 
possibilities for combination of full tonalities, give 
the multitudinous conditions in the spheres into 
which the soul passes when freed from the earthly 
body, while there are, in addition, the intermediate 
conditions or semi-tones that belong to all persons 
in whom the astral element predominates. 

Man ought to pass from Earth life through the 
First Sphere into the Second without delaying in 
either an earth-bound condition or in that astral- 
elemental region beyond it. A ripe soul ought to 
traverse that narrow River of Death, leaving 
behind him the all of his mortal form and its astral- 
elemental envelopes, and should pass in his " soul 
essence' ' alone into that Second Sphere that lies 
beyond the dark river. Very few do this, for many, 
indeed, are either earth-bound for a time, or, 
worse still, are so deeply entangled in the conditions 
of the Astral-elemental Plane that they remain 
in it for many centuries, mistaking it for the true 
Spirit World. 

All the spheres of spirit life have their higher 
and lower polarity, as will be observed by a reference 
to the chart. The nature realm is in the lower 
polarities, and a spirit who is not very progressive 
may remain as a spirit in that lower polarity, and 
still possess the immortal heritage, which entrance 
to those spheres confers on even the humbler 
entities ; while those who pass into that Astral- 



ANATOMY OF THE EARTH 1 1 1 

elemental Plane, and reach in it fine mental 
development without the true spiritual accom- 
paniment obtainable only in the spirit spheres, 
are not possessed of the same heritage ; because 
they are not in the Spirit World, but only in that 
semi-astral region that leads back in the scale of 
evolution, and not forward. 

The mysteries of true spiritual evolution, and 
of growth in the spirit, belong to the study of the 
Spirit World, and must be given in the books that 
will follow T this volume, space and the vast number 
of conditions to be considered in the study of the 
Astral-elemental Plane, to which this book is 
primarily devoted, prevent any full exposition of 
spiritual conditions except to show that they exist, 
and to give the contrasts between the true spiritual 
conditions and those of the Astral-elemental Plane, 
so frequently mistaken for it. 



CHAPTER VIII 

THE ASTRAL-ELEMENTAL PLANE 

The Astral-elemental Plane is shown on the chart 
as a transparent film that envelops the entire 
First Sphere. 

From its most material admixture in the Earth 
itself to the highest apex of the tall cone, it is 
always an elemental region, in which the astral 
elements are the refining media for all within it. 

Whether they are mental or material substances 
that are refined in this plane, they are ether ealised 
by the astral ether, but are not spiritualised by it, 
and are only of the same nature as the elementals. 
Hence they come under the same law of evolution 
and of the lower polarity, a law that brings 
destruction as the correlative to construction on 
that plane. Only to the fossilising character of the 
astral element itself is due the apparent per- 
manence of any form ether ealised in that plane. 
The seeming spirituality of the form is one of the 
illusions of that plane, for, when the end of this 
Earth comes, as come it must, those so apparently 
immortal and so beautifully ethereal lands, and 
those gossamer bodies of the astral regions, will melt 
away as snow melts in the fierce fires of the physical 
furnace. Even as the Astral World perished in a 
flood of that element, so will this Physical Earth 
perish in the fires of its element, and all those 

• 112 



THE ASTRAL-ELEMENTAL PLANE 113 

entities of the astral plane will also perish in that 
fire. There is no immortality to be gained by 
affiliation to its conditions. 

If we study the anatomy of the astral plane and 
o*f the Earth together, we shall see that this astral 
sac covers the whole Earth plane as a man's astral 
envelope encloses his Earth body. That astral 
sac bears a strong resemblance to a spongy net- 
work, the meshes of which contract and expand 
daily and nightly. Where the sun's rays fall this 
astral region is thin and very transparent, but at 
the portion away from the direct rays of the Sun 
it forms a deep, wide reservoir of the astral fluids 
that flow into this region daily, and are drawn up 
into that tall cone that floats over the Earth plane, 
and sends out its long root-suckers to drink in the 
astral fluids. 

The tall cone seems to stretch up towards the 
Dark Sea as if rejoicing in its stillness and darkness — 
its negation. It is as though the cone is repelled by 
the activities of those myriad forms of semi-astral 
life that gyrate round the Earth itself, and then 
are sucked up by those giant roots of the bulb- 
cone, and carried round and round in long spirals, 
drawn on by a strong current that flows towards 
the Dark Sea of Death ; forming that vast cloud 
around the cone that assumes the appearance of 
many lands. 

Although the astral envelope encloses the whole 
Earth and the Earth plane, it is only at this region, 
away from the sun rays, that its vast size and the 



114 PROBLEMS OF MEDIUMSHIP 

extent of the realm it encloses can be seen. Its 
bulk far exceeds that of the Earth, although 
its exceeding ethereality renders it like a cloud- 
realm only ; and its peculiar shape, as extended by 
the presence of that tall cone, tends to confuse the 
sight of the Earth -plane clairvoyant, accustomed 
to think of the spirit spheres as encircling the 
Earth in equal rings. 

As the Earth turns on its axis daily the astral 
fluids flow away from the approaching sunlight 
and under the sac, or skin, in which those fluids 
are contained. As they flow, they cause the 
astral envelope to expand, and swell in the way 
the gas-bag of a balloon expands as the gas fills it ; 
and as the astral fluid flows on the film envelope 
shrinks together, and falls down again over the 
Earth and into the Earth, permeating the whole 
realm of matter in the way a fine oil saturates 
even stone and oozes through glass. 

This causes a daily and nightly flow of astral 
etheric waves all over and into the Earth, and a 
blending in the soil of astral and physical mag- 
netisms. It accounts for why all astral things 
become visible by night and not by day, and why 
the night side of life has so many mysteries the 
day cannot help us to fathom ; why there is power 
at night for phenomenal exhibitions upon the 
elemental planes : a power that comes with the 
darkness and ebbs away at daylight. 

The elemental plane and the astral plane 
blend as one, although the elements in it are of 



THE ASTRAL-ELEMENTAL PLANE 115 

the physical as well as of the astral embryo 
materials. 

The Earth ball turns on its axis daily, floating 
in the fluids of its elemental plane, just as a ball 
might turn over and over in a glass filled with water. 

The " sac " of the astral envelope does not turn 
with the motion of the Earth ball ; the fluids within 
it simply flow under its coverings, agitated by the 
motion of the Earth, and the effects of the sunlight 
on the astral element in those fluids. 

The whole of the real Spirit Spheres are stationary. 
They rest above the Astral Sac, and are polarised to 
the Spiritual Element, and thus are not affected by 
the influences that regulate the motions of the 
material Earth and the astral fluids. They are, 
however, carried round the Sun with the Earth, 
because all are enclosed in that outer envelope of 
the planet that gives to the whole its separate 
individuality as a distinct, self-contained, unit. 

At the point where the tall " cone " of the Astral- 
elemental Plane is seen, rising from the browner 
mass of fluids, the appearance of this region is 
that of a protuberance on the spherical form of the 
Earth plane ; it rises up from it in fact as an 
excrescence, a fungus growth on the body of the 
Earth and under the astral film. 

It is, in truth, a parasitic region, the result of 
the presence of a group of parasitic spirits surviving 
from the Astral Era as an attachment fastened 
on to the Earth seed, and not any necessary part 
of the anatomy of the Earth. 



116 PROBLEMS OF MEDIUMSHIP 

This cone is the bulb root developed by the 
spirits from the lost astral world, who were too 
corrupt and evil to find incarnation at any stage of 
the Earth's evolution, yet were too strong as 
individualities, too powerful as mentalities, to be 
extinguished together with the corrupt entities 
of the lower soul alone. 

The cone has the appearance of the bulb root 
of a water plant, floating on the fluids of the 
Elemental-astral Plane, and is under the enclosing 
sac, which it lifts up into that curious pointed 
shape. Seen from below, it sometimes presents 
the semblance of a cloud land, as well as of a water 
plant ; it floats on the sky like a mirage, and from 
it innumerable fine threads, like root tendrils, 
reach down to the Earth plane and draw up life 
essence. Those fine fibrous roots, far more ethereal 
even to clairvoyant sight than the finest spider's 
threads, extend themselves all across the Earth 
region of the elemental plane, as it is carried past 
them by the revolving Earth at night, and forms 
a net of subtle attractive power that draws to it 
all persons who allow magnetic affinity to become 
established with the conditions of that plane. 

This floating realm assumes many metamorphoses. 
Floral islands of the most luxuriant tropical plants 
and trees and vividly beautiful flowers, marvellous 
vistas of mountains and valleys, of magnificent 
buildings and lofty palaces, great cities more 
wonderful than any upon the Earth, wide oceans 
and lovely lakes, clear rivers and sandy plains, 



THE ASTRAL-ELEMENTAL PLANE 117 

unfold in one panoramic effect after another till 
the seer imagines all creation must be passing 
before his eyes, and all the marvels of the spirit 
realms unveiling their beauties to his sight. Some- 
times great spirits appear to pass, or pause to hold 
converse with the seer. The most magnificent, 
the most colossal forms belong to them, and suggest 
that they can only be from the highest spheres of 
spirit life. 

In very truth, the whole is of the nature of an 
illusion. The visions and the majestic spirits 
who seem so vivid with life and power, are merely 
reflections on that marvellous astral aura of the 
Earth that has been sucked up by that strange 
bulb root, and serves to illuminate the thought 
pictures thrown upon that focus of attraction by 
the minds of the lost spirits of the Astral World. 
These pictures represent quite truthfully the 
dwelling-places of these lost spirits, but those 
dwelling-places exist no longer anywhere, save as 
memory pictures, because they belonged to the lost 
Astral World, and have perished with it. 

With these memory pictures the former appear- 
ances of the astral spirits as they were in past days can 
be shown also as living and moving amid those 
scenes that were, indeed, fair beyond the power of 
mortal man, immersed in dull, insensate matter, to 
conceive of them. 

The whole fantasia is as if a man in the depths of 
degradation and squalor were to call up visions 
of his youth and day of power, and throw those 



118 PROBLEMS OF MEDIUMSHIP 

visions upon a sensitised mirror, on which they 
would be reproduced as existent verities, so that 
they might even cheat the man himself with the 
hope that they were not lost to him for ever. 

Sometimes, if attention is focussed upon this 
lotus land steadily, its flowers become huge octopus 
plants, with long, snake-like roots, extending from 
each blossom ; giant suckers emerging from the 
dark centre of the cone, and absorbing with greedy 
avidity everything that is carried past them on the 
astral tide. 

Grey and white mists envelop that tall cone, 
and gyrate round the black central zone. The 
appearance is of sheath over sheath enveloping the 
dark centre, as skins of a bulb infold one another ; 
and every sheath is a semi-transparent grey and 
white film through which that inner darkness may 
be seen. 

The enfolding sheaths suggest that they enclose 
the heart of the blossom, that inner core from which 
the seeds of new lives will be perennially born ; in 
truth, there is nothing within that darkness that 
can give life at all. All that is within that hollow 
cylinder absorbs life, and never gives it back again. 

The darkness of that cylinder is like that of a 
ring, a tall circular column of such opaque black- 
ness that it forms a background for those semi- 
luminous grey and white mists that gyrate round 
it in long, broad spirals ; it serves to give the effect 
of a mirror to those luminous mists of astral 
vapours. 



THE ASTRAL-ELEMENTAL PLANE 119 

Where the tall, dark column looms through 
these mists, it gives a deep shade of greyness, and 
multiplies itself into myriad pillars as of black 
marble ; broken shafts melting away in an endless 
vista — a strange illusion, caused by these magic 
mists, that also multiply a thousandfold the images 
seen through their agency. Endless panoramas of 
infinitude these seem, and yet they are only the 
magnified and multiplied replicas of fragmentary 
things. 

This effect, from those faintly luminous mists, 
and the tall, dark column within them, is that of a 
mirror that is circular, and has no ending, so that 
one may travel round and round it and behold on 
both sides that endless panorama of living realities, 
past histories, shadows of future things, all blended 
into one phantasmagoria that drifts round the tall 
column in a long chain of ascent from the elemental 
plane of the Earth. 

It is these luminous transparent astral vapours, 
like liquid air, gyrating round the central cone, 
that form the mirror, and are the media for the 
reflections seen in it. They also serve to throw those 
reflections down on to the Earth plane and its 
astral fluids, which forms another mirror. All 
that is thrown upon these luminous vapours from 
without the dark column, and all that is projected 
on to them from within it by the minds of the powerful 
mentalities, who live in the darkness as in a prison- 
house, find equal power for expression in objective 
visions. 



120 PROBLEMS OF MEDIUMSHIP 

Affiliation to this mirror gives the power of 
seeing in the black mirrors used in evil magic, 
black being the colour that is its affinity. 

Hence black is by no means a desirable colour 
to include in any part of mediumistic visioning, 
either a black velvet background for a crystal or any 
other purpose. 

The dark spirits who live within the astral cone, 
having no vital essence of their own, no media 
on which to express anything, have, nevertheless, 
by great skill and ingenuity, developed this grey 
land as a distinct condition of existence and made 
it their domain. 

They obtained the original germ from some 
astral seeds of what was called the " Lotus Land " 
of the astral world : a region in which the spirit 
inhabitants were not wholly corrupt and evil, but 
only passive and negative, drifting into good or 
into evil at the suggestions of external mentalities, 
or in mechanical response to undisciplined desires — 
the lotus eaters, the dreamers of sensual dreams. 
Hence comes the name of the Lotus Land, and that 
flower as its symbol. 

Many unprogressed spirits from the lost Astral 
World contributed to the building up of this strange 
land that forms a series of sheaths enclosing the 
dark cone of the Astral Men. The Mystics gave a 
large percentage of the elements of which these 
lands are composed, and the beauty and symbolism 
that take form and objective existence in the 
thought creations of that plane are due to the Mystics, 



THE ASTRAL-ELEMENTAL PLANE 121 

A high degree of mysticism does not necessarily 
imply a corresponding mental and spiritual develop- 
ment ; on the contrary, it frequently means that 
brain and spirit body are being robbed of their 
means of growth, in order to feed and develop 
excessive visioning on the mystic planes. 

Thus the mystics of the Astral World, who became 
entranced in contemplation of the beauty and 
ideality mirrored in the heart of the Astral Star, 
would become in themselves almost petrified, 
mentally, by its influence. Extreme contemplation 
of one theme, or one line of thought, no matter how 
high is the ideal, or how beautiful the religious or 
philosophic truth that is enshrined in the subject of 
contemplation, is paralysing to the mind, and 
arrests the evolutionary process ; in effect, suspends 
all activities. 

The tendency is to live in the spirit- while lost in 
contemplation, and not to exercise the functions of 
the material body. The mental powers become the 
agent for the supplying of the life essences, which 
even the most ecstatic condition require. Ergo, 
the dreamers, unless in the conditions of suspended 
animation that constitute one type of trance 
state, are certain to draw on any source of supply 
available, and to do so unconsciously, because 
mind and body are acting separately ; the machinery 
of the body is merely that of an automaton. 

In the Astral World the supply of vital essences 
would be in the atmosphere surrounding the 
dreamer, and would be in great abundance, so that 



122 PROBLEMS OF MEDIUMSHTP 

no vampirism would be required to obtain it, nor 
would vampirism be developed by thus acquiring 
the sustaining fluids. The dreaming mystic of 
that era of the Earth's evolution could allow every 
power of his mind to concentrate upon his visions, 
and absorb both his mental and bodily sustenance 
at the same time, while in the semi-entranced 
condition. 

The astral body of Adamite man to-day shows 
ability to reproduce this power of absorption, if 
development on certain lines is followed ; but the 
astral body of Adamite man is not exactly the 
same as the body of the mystic of the astral era, 
and man is apt to become a parasite, if he lives by 
the agency of absorption, instead of by the normal 
means pertaining to material conditions. 

The perfect condition for the reception of mental 
impressions from other minds is, however, that of 
the passive absorber, in whom all but the mental 
perceptions are at rest. 

That is, nevertheless, a negative state. The 
individual is not using his own mental faculties 
at all, but is allowing his mind to become simply a 
mirror to reflect the results of the activities of other 
mentalities. The powers of such a brain will first 
stagnate, then atrophy: because it is a law of 
nature that everything that is inactive withers 
away. 

The mentality of the perfect mystic, who carries 
to its extreme possibilities the condition of passive 
receptive contemplation, becomes a frozen pool 



THE ASTRAL-ELEMENTAL PLANE 123 

in affiliation to the motionless centre of the astral 
element, that most perfect of all mental mirrors. 

There are, and can be, no emotions in the mind 
thus passively contemplative. The calmness and 
purity are those of a statue, not of a living, pulsing 
entity. 

There can be no progressive evolution in such a 
character, for the whole object of evolution is 
attainment of the highest degree of sensation 
united to power of control over the expression of 
the emotions, and regulation of the actions that 
arise from strong emotions. To kill or to petrify 
emotion is to go back to the conditions of the lower 
polarity, in which there are no emotions, but only 
automatic response to magnetic influences : the 
conditions of the rocks and the fluids. 

The mystics of the Astral Era, who became lost 
in meditation and oblivious to realities, would 
have gained no share in the spiritual evolution of 
their world, for all that is possessed in the spirit 
must be won, grain by grain, through stress and 
conquest and unremitting labour. Periods of 
rest are the necessary counterpoise to activity 
in the spirit, but rest must not degenerate in a 
negative condition barren of all save dreams. 

Many mystics of the Astral Era would be carried 
away in the conditions of the lower polarity, even 
as flowers and fair things of beauty in many forms 
were carried away as part of the nature realm. 

All these negative, unprogressed souls would 
forfeit their heritage in the Spirit Realms for the 



124 PROBLEMS OF MEDIUMSHIP 

exact opposite reason that the Serpent-men lost 
theirs, and all would form a group of souls in 
elemental affinity, although widely different in 
moral character and intellectual development. 

For the spirits who were merely negative, and 
not evil, there would be a far more rapid release 
from their intermediate state, and during the 
period, when the elements were evolving into their 
present conditions, these spirits of the astral world 
would find opportunity for incarnation in the 
ethereal stages of the Earth's evolution in matter. 

Before Adam appeared, these Spirits of the 
Elements, who were almost of the Astral Era still, 
would inhabit those cloudlands of the developing 
Earth, and their cloudlands would be driven back 
and back, farther and farther from the material 
ball, and gather in long spirals round the astral 
cone ; drawn nearer and nearer to it in response 
to the desires of the Serpent-men. 

The Grey Land, with its crescent of light, represents 
all that is now left of that semi-astral realm. The 
dark cone owes its existence to the Serpent-men of 
the lost Astral World. Both realms represented 
types of life in the astral era, and as such formed the 
focus for attracting all that there was, and is now, 
of the astral fluids, which crystallise upon those 
semi-mental creations, and give them an inter- 
mediate condition between mind and matter. 

Both the Grey Land and the Dark Cone possess 
tangible existence on the mental-astral planes ; 
but, whereas the Serpent-men have had no spiritual 



THE ASTRAL-ELEMENTAL PLANE 125 

essence to transmute into conditions of true spirit 
states, the mystics and other negative spirits of 
the astral era had spiritual essence, and thus could 
give a semi-spiritual condition to their grey lands, 
and truly spiritual conditions to those intermediate 
planes that are not part of the grey lands of the 
Elemental-astral Plane, but a series of spiritual 
regions that ascend from Earth life by another line 
of evolution than that which leads to the grey 
lands. 

It is these intermediate planes of semi-astral, 
semi-physical evolution that have been likened to 
the semi-tones in the musical scale. 

The gateway that bears the symbol of the rainbow 
arch, and leads into the grey lands, does not admit 
to the intermediate planes of spirit life. One of the 
errors that have done much to confuse the study of 
mediumship, and pervert the path of normal evo- 
lution is the error that has led many psychics 
in all ages to choose the false way that leads only 
to the Grey Land, instead of the true and narrow 
way that leads to life in the Spirit Realms. 

The power that is in a spirit to attract spiritual 
life, and radiate it again, suggested the clever 
scheme by which the souls of the negative mystics 
of the astral era were first made the focus for 
attracting life to their " shell " of an astral realm, 
and the idea, that through them a line of union, 
with man of the Adamite creation, might be formed 
that would link the Serpent-men with the world of 
Earth once more. 



126 PROBLEMS OF MEDIUMSHIP 

To keep supplying that astral shell of this Grey 
Land with life as a supply source for the Serpent-men; 
and to keep it as a screen against the encroach- 
ment of the physical element, that is so antagonistic 
and destructive to all purely astral entities, was the 
primal purpose of the institution of all those lines 
of vampirism under the guise of religions, or 
philosophies, or sciences of occult origin that have 
appeared in all ages of the Earth's history, and 
which are continually being renewed in fresh 
forms of appeal to men's minds as fast as their true 
nature is exposed, and the old lines of teachings 
destroyed. 

Not only is that Elemental-astral Plane an example 
of the power and evil influences of the Serpent-men, 
but the Dark Sea owes its present aspect to them, 
for it is fed with all those nullified and destroyed 
personalities whom the evil spirits have literally 
absorbed in prolonging their own existences. 

When the Earth was first evolved into material 
form there was no dark sea separating the merely 
elemental region from its higher evolution in spirit 
life. There was only transition, step by step, 
from sphere to sphere, by an unbroken ladder of 
progress. 

But when Adam and Eve fell into the trap set 
by the Serpent-men, and involved themselves 
and their descendants in the meshes of the net- 
work of those astral influences, that elemental 
region assumed an importance previously unknown, 
and the Dark Sea began to grow in volume and 



THE ASTRAL-ELEMENTAL PLANE 127 

spread as a ring of separation and death between 
man and his Spirit Spheres. 

The elemental plane ought to be the Placenta 
Region, and nothing more. It is designed to give 
form and expression to all types of living things. 
There ought to be no return into its conditions once 
that region of embryo life has been entered and 
passed out of into objective existence ; it is because 
of the affiliations to its conditions that have been 
established since the Eden days that so many 
persons become chained to that region. 

Every old occultism has recognised the existence 
of a danger zone, and of vast hordes of evil in- 
telligences of all types of men and strange beings 
as dwelling in it, and one of the most vexed 
problems of mediumship in all ages has been the 
difficulty of protecting the psychics, who essayed 
to explore that zone of evil in the attempt to reach 
the spirit lands. The earliest spiritualists were 
repeatedly warned of the dangerous class of 
spirits that surround the Earth, but no one 
has yet viewed that realm in all its myriad 
aspects. 

The spirits w T ho carry the Serpent as their 
symbol of power are the true overlords of that 
realm. They have many varieties of henchmen 
and humble slave souls under their dominion ; 
and, while only to a few daring students have 
glimpses of these spirits been given as actual 
verities seen as they exist now, their all-extended 
influence is a constant menace to mankind, and 



128 PROBLEMS OF MEDIUMSHIP 

must be recognised as such by every mediumistic 
person. 

Once the existence of the Serpent-men is recog- 
nised, and their relation to the wonderlands of the 
ElementaL-astral Plane is known, those strange 
floating cloud realms — those islands of gorgeous 
flowers ; those marvellous vistas of great 
civilisations, whose histories seem to unroll before 
the eyes of the psychic like an endless panorama 
of creation — become as weird and awful visions 
of illusionment, hiding within them and their 
luxuriant beauties other visions, too dread to be 
contemplated, with aesthetic pleasure, when the 
true character of their unearthly splendour is 
known. The dark secrets of unholy pow T er, and 
the tragic mysteries that those splendours shroud 
and the flower lands hide, change their aspect to 
that of a charnel house, when the truth is discovered 
by the clear sight of the higher soul. 

The Dark Sea, as it surges round the enclosing 
sac of the first sphere and its outer rings of the 
Elemental-astral Plane, holds the results of the 
evil fruits, that, since the days of Adam, have been 
grown and ripened and harvested by the Serpent- 
men as the produce of those seeds of wisdom and 
" secrets of power " that were given to Adam and 
Eve first, and have been offered ever since to their 
descendants. 



CHAPTER IX 

ASTRAL SPIRITS 
THE MASTERS AND THEIR POWER OF PROJECTION 

The term " astral spirits " has been so often mis- 
applied that it will be well to define its meaning. 
The effects of the influence of the spirits of the 
Elemental-astral Plane is so strongly marked in 
all exhibitions of mediumship to-day that it will be 
well to define their position also, since both possess 
power on that plane. 

The astral spirits — i.e., the spirits of the Astral 
Era — are not upon the Earth at all. They have 
entirely passed away from it. The only repre- 
sentatives of that era are those " imprisoned 
mentalities " who are in the dark centre of the 
astral cone. 

All the other spirits from the lost astral world 
have long since found a measure of incarnation 
in the semi-material stages of the present Earth 
The shells, or sheaths, of those lands that they 
once inhabited, before they found incarnation in the 
semi-material era of the Earth's evolution, were 
left, like the cocoon cast off by the butterfly ; 
and these shells, or films, were retained by the 
dark astral spirits, just as the astral shell, cast 
off by a man in the flesh, is sometimes artificially 

129 



130 PROBLEMS OF MEDIUMSHIP 

preserved, and retained in the vampire condition 
of a mere spongy absorber of vitality. 

Thus the Grey Land that was once a land of 
many colours, much beauty, is now merely a realm 
of semi-moribund existences, grey as ashes, and 
a place where the abnormal sponge-like properties 
of the vampire have attained abnormal powers of 
sucking in all that comes within reach of its 
attractions. 

Those astral spirits of evil lives have filled that 
grey realm with vitality, stolen from many sen- 
sitives all through the ages. They have made it 
animate with this borrowed life, so that psychics 
who become able to see it imagine it to be a realm 
teeming with vital interests. Nevertheless, year 
by year, it is beginning to shrink and wither, 
in spite of all the arts of the super-vampires who 
control its destinies. 

Those Serpent-men, whose sign manual is the 
Serpent, and who are imprisoned in that sheath of 
greyness that is at once their fortress and their 
prison, can never leave the shelter it affords. They 
could not endure the effects of the physical light 
for an hour ; to leave their prison would be to 
court annihilation. 

They can, and do, however, project their mental 
influence all over the Earth, and can reproduce 
a variety of pictures mentally created that show 
themselves as they desire to appear in the sight of 
man. 

To do this requires the media of persons in the 



ASTRAL SPIRITS 131 

flesh, whose mentality is on a plane that approxi- 
mates to their own, and whose auras possess the 
necessary degree of astral fluids to receive the 
imprint of the astral visions. 

In this way they usually sho.w the appearance 
they possessed in the astral world by recalling it to 
their own minds, and transferring the mental picture 
to the medium s mind. 

If mediums will consider that it is these spirits 
who lost their heritage in the higher life by their 
evil desires, they will realise that no true guidance 
is to be obtained by gaining the power of seeing 
any of the astral spirits of our Earth ; and may also 
realise the exceeding danger of allowing them to 
establish affinity. 

In animating these replicas of a former stage, 
they can give expression to their pictures and vivid 
action by the power of their own minds, acting 
through the mental image as a mask, that they 
hold over their true appearance, veiling its dreadful 
realities by the illusionary effects of those " memory 
pictures " of themselves ; pictures such as an old 
man can call up in his mind when he remembers 
his appearance as a youth. 

If man had this power, that is possessed by an 
astral spirit, of clothing himself in thought-created 
garments and a thought-created form, and of 
changing at will the impression of his appearance 
that he desired to give, man also could create 
illusions as to his personal appearance. An actor 
does this, in a measure, when his whole expression 



132 PROBLEMS OF MEDIUMSHIP 

and, for the moment, his whole character becomes 
that of some personality he is representing. 

To an astral spirit, the power of whose intellect 
far transcends that of any man on Earth, the process 
of casting over his true character this veil of an 
illusionary personality is as simple as the art of 
the actor. He is, for the moment, the character 
he would represent — be that a saint or a devil. 
He can repeat the process of metamorphosis at 
will, but only where there is present, on Earth and 
in the personality of some earthly medium, the 
elements he requires to assimilate and assume to 
cover over his own personality as with a cloak. 

Mental and moral attributes are reproduced 
on the astral plane as objective realities ; thoughts, 
good or bad, become things there, and the aspir- 
ations of a good man, who acts as a medium, or 
those of an evil man, will alike give materials to 
the spirit, who uses the elements of all these things 
in the aura of the medium. 

Good, healthy magnetism will reproduce itself 
in the perfect physical form that is " etherealised '-' 
from the elements given off by the medium, and 
those elements that he is absorbing from the 
atmosphere. The moment a medium begins to 
throw off elements and generate magnetic pow T er, 
he begins also to absorb from his surroundings ; 
and thus, not only what he is in himself, but what 
he obtains, will affect the appearance of the visions 
built up in his aura ; or (to go farther still in the 
process of creating a thought form, and then 



ASTRAL SPIRITS 133 

semi-materialising it) to the objective appearance 
given to the master spirit, who is manipulating 
the machinery of the astral-elemental planes. 

Everything being only borrowed from the 
medium, and through the medium from the 
surrounding conditions, will inevitably reproduce 
them in clothing the thought form. 

Thus it will be understood that any evil spirit, 
or one of the Serpent-men, with all his power of 
creating illusions, would, nevertheless, be limited 
by the nature of the elements that he was able to 
obtain, and that the purity of those elements would 
be a vital condition if he desired to shew himself 
in the character of a good and pure spirit and 
personate a high religious individuality. 

It is quite a mistake to imagine that evil, and 
persons of evil lives are desired as the mediums 
for the propagation of the Serpent line of wisdem ; 
good persons are far more useful, as affording pure 
and attractive elements to manipulate, if once 
those good persons can be rendered so negative 
and so trustful that they will allow a convenient 
veil of illusions to be cast over their own eyes, and 
will resign their mentality to the guidance of a 
dominating personality representative of the 
Serpent-men. 

That which is in itself pure cannot be made to 
assume any evil disguise, nor can it be contaminated 
by impurities. It cannot amalgamate with that 
which is false and vile ; so that nothing can be 
shown of the pure and good spirit by a false or 



134 PROBLEMS OF MEDIUMSHIP 

illusionary process. We do not see God, because 
we have no conditions on Earth that can reflect 
His perfect purity. What we do see sometimes in 
very exalted states is the mental image of one of 
His messengers ; Himself we cannot see. 

In evil conditions, or those that are partly 
evil or unhealthy (unclean, because impure, for 
health means purity in the material elements), 
we should see no appearance at all of a pure spirit ; 
we would not see such a spirit clothed in an impure 
garment, for such a spirit could never assume it. 
We would have no manifestation at all. 

If, however, the spirit was not pure, not good, 
but only assuming the elements of a good person 
to produce an illusion as to his real condition, 
an appearance of something would almost inevitably 
take place, but show first the nature of the elements 
in use, and next the damning fact that the spirit 
was as ready to manifest his appearance through 
impure as through pure elements, and w T as quite 
able to amalgamate his personality with them and 
assume them. That, in truth, while he had power 
to appropriate the elements, he had not power to 
change their character. He could clothe his thought 
form in the elements he collected, but do so only 
as a man might dip a candle wick in melted fat 
again and again till the required consistency 
was obtained ; the candle would be rank or fragrant 
because the fat (or materials) used was foul or 
was wholesome. 

No pure spirit could use a foul amalgamation of 



ASTRAL SPIRITS 135 

elements. Spiritualists know that if they desire 
communion with pure spirits they must give them 
pure conditions to enter, even as mental projections, 
whereas the evil and impure can, and do, manifest 
readily in all sorts of conditions. 

It has even been proved that an evil spirit who 
has gained entrance to a circle can cover his evil 
personality with a white robe drawn from the pure 
among the circle itself, and so shield his true aspect. 
Even white draperies, once held to be proof of the 
purity of a spirit, are not found to be an infallible 
test. 

Does not this go to show that something certainly 
responds to the invocation, but that " something " 
has a dual aspect. The resultant appearance is 
representative, not of the power of the spirit 
who responds, except in regard to his ability to 
show some tangible appearance, but of the limitation 
of his power to the conditions of the elements sur- 
rounding the person he employs as medium. The 
power of creating an illusion of beauty is limited 
and subordinated to the conditions round the 
medium, and still more certainly by the reality of 
the spirit's own condition when nothing of a purer 
and higher character can be appropriated and 
used. 

That which applies to the spirits of the astral 
plane applies also to the Masters who teach their 
formulas for development and the production of 
forms of manifestations. 

The term " Master " has many applications, 



136 PROBLEMS OF MEDIUMSHIP 

according to the subjects in relation to which it is 
used from the Super-masters of the Serpent line 
to all those adepts and teachers who represent the 
Oriental School of Occultism, and those " Masters " 
of the witchcraft eras whose lines of teachings show 
many points of resemblance. In regard to the 
Masters whose presence may be invoked by a 
mystic syllable of power, it may be pointed out 
here that if the Master were himself of a high type, 
and possessed of perfect moral radiations, he would 
not be dependent on the conditions of the medium's 
surroundings. He would not be sometimes seen 
as a perfect being, and at others as a form repre- 
sentative of vileness unspeakable. It is admitted 
by the Orientals themselves that this is possible, 
and there are pupils of that school who have thus 
seen the " Masters " both as beautiful and as vile. 
The Master would either show himself always as 
a fine personality, or not manifest at all. 

It is evident that, while the Master's mentality 
controls the agglomeration of elements he 
employs, he cannot change their essential con- 
stituents. He is himself only on the Elemental- 
astral Plane, and the forces he controls are only 
the elemental forces. 

This being so in relation to both the Serpent- 
men who have made that plane their kingdom, 
and also to all the spirits and mortals they influence 
and control, the best protection a psychic can have 
against their insidious influence is in the material 
envelopment of the earth life and body of the flesh, 



ASTRAL SPIRITS 137 

and no medium ought to allow himself to be drawn 
out of that zone of protection. 

It is persons who can be influenced on the mental 
planes who are in most danger. Hence prolonged 
meditation, merging often in a trance state, or of 
suspended thought ; fasting to weaken the physical 
hold on life ; contemplation of religious ideals ; 
and power of visioning on the mental plane, are all 
questionable, if great care is not taken as to the 
objects of the meditation. So strong a barrier is 
the material condition that the astral spirits require 
to find mediums who are of semi-astral, semi- 
physical lines of descent in order to transfer their 
astral-created illusions into material objectivity, 
and it is always among races who are of the mixed 
lines of descent that the teachings of the Serpent- 
men begin to show their influence over the leading 
lines of thought that find dominance in each 
succeeding era. 

Once affiliation to the Serpent-men has been 
established with any group of thinkers, the network 
of their teachings and their instructions for develop- 
ing psychics on to the Astral-elemental Plane is 
soon spread and securely attached ; and in some 
cases so strong is the power of the Serpent mind that 
sensitives are actually drawn on and on and into 
the dark realm of the Serpent-men, and are thus 
destroyed. 

The Bible speaks of the " net " that is to be 
broken that the enmeshed souls may be delivered ; 
this is the net referred to. 



138 PROBLEMS OF MEDIUMSHIP 

These astral spirits cannot enter the elemental 
plane, being, as already stated, imprisoned in their 
own dark vacuum. It can be understood why they 
desire to draw men towards themselves, and why 
they prescribe formulas for development of the 
section of man's anatomy that corresponds to their 
lower polarity, and especially that which corre- 
sponds to and can be made to vibrate in response 
to their dark vacuum and its vibrations. 

Man's anatomy, corresponding section by section 
to the anatomical development of his planet ; 
each region in the Earth bearing its relation to some 
part of the material body of the man on Earth. 

The Serpent-men are the only spirits of the purely 
astral evolution attached to Earth now. All others 
are now of a more or less mixed degree of semi- 
material developments. 

There are many degrees of these semi-astral 
spirits around the Earth, but they cannot claim 
the title of " astral spirits " any longer. 

There is, however, another class of spirits who 
have been sometimes called " astral spirits " and 
sometimes " angelic beings/' and other attractive 
titles, and who have usurped a great deal of control 
over the minds and bodies of men and women 
who essayed to enter upon unrestricted intercourse 
with the astral planes under the delusion these 
planes were the gateways to the heavenly realms. 
To some mortals these beings have even presented 
themselves in the character of astral brides or 
bridegrooms, for they are able to enter into very 



ASTRAL SPIRITS 139 

close affinity with Earth's material conditions. 
They have been the controls during the witchcraft 
eras, and the inspirers of some of the old occult, 
semi-religious, semi-scientific associations of Euro- 
pean evolution. 

These spirits are not astral spirits at all, and have 
no title to the name. They are simply men and 
women of the days before the Flood of Noah's 
era, and they had developed their astral bodies into 
so perfect an affiliation to the elemental plane 
that they are now chained to its conditions, and 
can never leave it again ; for not till the end of the 
Earth comes in physical fire will their so-called 
astral bodies be destroyed and free their souls. 

Spiritualists who have adopted and used the 
means of development that were enshrined in those 
old occultisms have thereby done infinite harm to 
what should have been the pure, true line of 
natural evolution of mediumship that the inspirers 
of modern spiritualism attempted to establish, but 
which has now become sadly mixed with the old 
and dangerous and discredited errors. 

Those bodies of the Elemental-astral Plane that 
are built up from material elements as well as 
astral fluids, and with the two in equal com- 
bination make forms that are as iron cages, in- 
destructible except by the fiery furnace of the 
physical element at its lower pole. 

These are the beings who can truly dominate 
on the Elemental-astral Plane. They can protect 
or they can destroy, and against their edicts there 



140 PROBLEMS OF MEDIUMSHIP 

is no appeal, for they are the kings and queens 
who are as deputies and sub-rulers on that plane ; 
beings whose mentalities the Serpent-men control 
with an imperfect measure of success. 

Very magnificent are the appearances which some 
of them present when seen in light of the astral 
plane ; but appalling in the grossness of their 
passions and the colossal evils of which they are 
the parents. 

They are a mongrel crew, none the less, and do not 
represent the Astral Race at all. They possess 
marvellous power over the elements, and can build 
up almost anything they desire to construct on the 
elemental plane. In conjunction with mediums, 
these are the master-magicians of that plane. It 
is with them that partnership has been entered 
upon by one great magician in the Earth body 
after another, and the marvellous powers of those 
spirits has thus been transmitted. They are both 
evil and dangerous to form any affiliation with, 
and seldom, indeed, have their Earth partners 
escaped a tragic termination to their careers of 
powers. Every old writer on the magic arts 
recognises the dangers of intercourse with these 
beings — one time, Earth men themselves. 

Some of them are seen as colossal men and women. 
Often with large luminous halos enveloping them 
and astonishing powers of flight, due to the fact 
that they are the champion vampires of their plane, 
and can, and do, absorb from a multitude of spirits 
out of the body, and hosts of sensitive psychic 



ASTRAL SPIRITS 141 

persons in the flesh, and thus obtain all that 
magnetism that gives these evil beings their 
superabundant supply of luminous ether. In 
beholding these "Shining Ones/' the seer beholds 
the quintessence of evil vampire power developed 
through the ages upon ages since they lived on 
Earth. No wonder a sense of overpowering awe and 
fear is inspired by the sight of their passing across 
the plane of vision of the sensitives. The very 
power to see them indicates a great danger, for it 
shows the sensitive has acquired an affiliation to 
their plane, and may be drawn on to it at death of 
the mortal body. That body forms the barrier 
against absorption by these beings, but at death 
that barrier will be removed, and the unfortunate 
psychic will find it difficult — sometimes, alas ! 
impossible — to avoid being drawn into the vortex 
of that magnetic whirlpool that these vampire 
spirits create around themselves, and set in motion 
by their powerful will-force. 

The rotation of the magnetic elements around 
these beings may be observed as a series of cork- 
screw spirals, the central pivot of which is the 
vampire spirit. The progressive revolutions of 
the screw inevitably carries anything that has been 
caught in the whirling vortex nearer and nearer 
the central pivot, till it is brought into direct con- 
tact and absorbed in that centre — i.e., the vampire 
spirit. 

These spirits of the Elemental-astral Plane 
drive in chariots, and ride upon winged horses, 



142 PROBLEMS OF MEDIUMSHIP 

and can throw over their personalities the appearance 
described by the Greeks and Romans as that of 
their Gods and Goddesses, until the clear sight of the 
truly spiritual clairvoyant reveals to the seer the 
vileness of the true appearance of these spirits 
when stripped of the glamour of the illusions 
with which they drape their forms, and the mental 
pictures of themselves they project around them. 

It is difficult for the average mortal to under- 
stand the power of creating an illusionary appear- 
ance of beauty and brightness around an evil 
spirit whose true personality is dark and vile, 
but it must be remembered that on that elemental 
plane everything is in a formative condition, and 
can be used to build up the semblance of anything, 
that is still no more than a mechanically-constructed 
form that will remain intact only so long as fresh 
elements can be added to it. Hence the vampirism. 

Like the Serpent-men, they can assume many 
appearances ; show themselves as living in mag- 
nificent palaces ; crowned as kings ; draped as 
sages ; devout as saints ; winged as are the angels ; 
yet all these are mere illusions, in which they en- 
velop themselves by a pow 7 er that is transmitted 
to them from their overlords, the Serpent-men. 
They cannot, however, assume any appearance 
of any era that post dates the period of their in- 
carnation upon Earth, because to give any appear- 
ance of any type of spirit, or any era of the Earth, 
requires that there be the foundation of an actual 
phase of existence experienced which has left the 



ASTRAL SPIRITS 143 

film of an accomplished thing. Even the Serpent- 
men, with all the falseness of their natures, when 
they project an appearance of one of themselves 
that is beautiful, show the characteristic features 
that they once possessed, and, in idealising their 
appearance into a perfection they never possessed 
in reality, even in the astral world, they take as 
their foundation features that were their own, and 
wear the semblance of drapery that was the fashion 
of their era. 

It is a law of the Universe that no one can 
show, as a spirit, anything to which he has not 
established affinity first as an actual possession, 
and these beings, who are on the elemental plane, 
had no share in Earth life after the Deluge. They 
were all by their own acts imprisoned on the 
elemental plane in the bodies of that plane, which 
they had so carefully constructed and developed 
from the astral root. They cannot show T as men and 
women of any later period, for all possibility of 
reincarnation was destroyed in the process of 
diverting all their powers to the building up of 
these gigantic astral bodies. 

When a spirit shows himself in the dress of a 
certain era, that fashion has a very important 
bearing on his condition in spirit life to those who 
understand the laws of spirit evolution. 

These beings, some of whom have called them- 
selves " Astral Bridegrooms/' have a great desire 
to establish themselves in that relation to mortals 
in order to gain from Earth life renewed powers on 



144 PROBLEMS OF MEDIUMSHIP 

their own pla'ne. These also are of the nature of 
the vampire, although they can give power from 
their plane in exchange for that which they absorb. 

No spirit who shows himself as a man of any 
period subsequent to the Deluge belongs to this 
class of beings, for never since then has there been 
the same astral conditions present in the Earth. 
Any spirit who has incarnated since that period 
cannot belong to their order which has distinct 
powers of their own evolving. 

Neither should any person who is descended from 
any of the semi-astral lines be supposed to derive 
descent from any of these beings, because nothing 
has ever descended from any unions they contrived 
to form. They never have had the power to create 
anything in the mortal form, or of its type. The 
very process by which they transferred all their 
creative powers to the Elemental-astral Plane 
destroyed finally and for ever all power they ever 
had in matter. 

Those races and those classes of mystics and 
mediums who claim astral descent can only derive 
their power from some of the unions between the 
semi-astral spirits of the elements and the Adamite 
race. These would be good or the reverse, as the 
Adamite race, with whom they united, would be ; 
but in no sense, and at no time, could they ever 
have been what these co-called "astral" bride- 
grooms were and are, for these are incapable of 
becoming parents on any plane, and are, indeed, 
unnameable abominations, worse than mere tra- 



ASTRAL SPIRITS 145 

vesties of the name of " astral bridegrooms/ ' 
which they assumed in derision of mankind. 

>j< % % % jfc 

The Spirits of the Intermediate Planes must never 
be confused with any of these so-called astral 
spirits of very mixed types. 

The Intermediate Planes do not belong to the 
Elemental-astral Plane at all ; they begin above 
that stage, and are intermediate or borderland 
regions between two different spheres of spirit life. 

The. races who descended from the union of 
astral and material conditions, via the spirits of the 
astral era, who found immersion in the etherealised 
conditions of the elements of matter, w r ould possess 
a right of heritage in the Intermediate Planes, 
but would also be in greater danger of becoming 
entangled in the conditions of the Elemental- 
astral Plane, because of their affinity to astral con- 
ditions. For such persons mediumship would 
present very special problems. 



CHAPTER X 

THE EVOLUTION OF MAN'S MATERIAL BODY THROUGH 

MATTER 

THE SOUL OF MAN WAS NEVER IN THAT MATTER 

From the moment of Adam's appearance upon 
Earth, the higher and lower soul are seen acting in 
conjunction. 

Before that there was in the whole nature realm 
of matter only the inferior soul with its types, 
automatic, unconscious in its operations. When 
Adam fell, he took upon himself and for his offspring 
the conditions of that lower soul in all that pertained 
to his material body. So strongly does the nature 
soul dominate man's earthly form now, so automatic 
are its actions, so closely do its responses to the 
cravings of the lower soul correspond to those of 
the nature world, the idea has arisen that man, 
the higher soul, has come up through all those 
inferior conditions and lower types of living things 
to find culmination in his own superior type at 
last. 

This is a great error, not the less serious because 
it has found so wide an acceptance with those who 
advocate the Theory of Evolution. That theory is 
right in essence, but partially wrong in application, 
because it does not recognise that there are three 
separate forms combined in the one personality — 
the personality that we call a man in the flesh. That 

146 



EVOLUTION OF THE BODY 147 

their evolution may proceed from three starting- 
points, and find union in the one personality 
because the form man wears is no more a con- 
stituent of his soul than the garments he puts on ; 
and there is no more necessity for man the spirit 
to have been in all the lower forms of nature than 
there is for him to personally spin every thread of 
the yarn from which his coat is made. 

As presented by Darwin and his coadjutors, the 
theory applies to all that realm of nature from 
which man's material body is derived. It was in 
that realm of nature that the explorations and 
experiments were made ; the material body was 
the subject of their study, and with it their experi- 
ments ended. 

In expounding a broad principle of evolution, 
from the lowest condition to the highest, Darwin 
and his school gave testimony to a law of the 
Universe that is a truth, but they did not take into 
account the spiritual possibilities of a plane of 
evolution distinct from that of the material plane : 
or that there might be a law of a higher evolution 
pertaining to that plane and to man, but not to 
the nature realm, although man, when in the 
material body, came under the operations of both 
laws. 

Darwin left his theory at the point where the 
link between man and the lower kingdom is found 
to be missing ; indicating that there the parallel 
ceases. The idea that an ape-man existed, but has 
become extinct, is merely an hypothesis ; and, 



148 PROBLEMS OF MEDIUMSHIP 

although a plausible explanation, it is not the only 
possible one. It has been left for other persons 
who adopted Darwin's theories to carry them on 
from the point at which he left them, and to 
expand and apply Darwin's discoveries to con- 
ditions of existence not included in his work ; 
and, further, to adapt and dove-tail them into 
schemes of religion and philosophy that were no 
part of his original theories. 

Man's evolution is a threefold process, because 
man has three bodies, each of a separate element, 
and all three as constituent parts of his personality ; 
just as he wears several garments at the same time, 
yet can take each one off separately. The garment 
man wears on Earth is the body of the flesh — 
i.e., matter derived from the physical elements. 

This matter of which the body of the flesh is 
formed has come up through all the stages of 
evolution in the nature world, each stage refining 
and sensitising it a degree more till it became of 
a condition that man, the spirit of the higher 
polarity, could assume it. 

The last factor in that refining and preparing 
process is the elemental-astral body derived from 
a seed from the Astral world. 

That elemental-astral body is the missing link 
that unites man of the higher soul to matter of the 
lower. It is not of the ape-man type, because 
man's higher soul, with its dominant individuality, 
transforms the sensitive, sponge-like materials of 
the elemental form into the likeness of the man 



EVOLUTION OF THE BODY 149 

who wears it. The elemental-astral body is merely 
a film, covering every part of the physical body, 
and is void of all features of its own. It is com- 
posed of elements of the astral and the physical 
planes, and is capable, in a normal condition, of 
absorbing and assimilating them. 

In an abnormal condition this elemental-astral 
body becomes a very different thing ; and it is 
exactly for this reason that the study of the astral 
element, and all that it means in conjunction with 
the elemental form of the material ego, becomes of 
so much importance to mediums, because that is 
the machinery in nine cases out of ten which the 
methods of the old occultisms brought into active 
co-operation with the will and desires of the 
psychic. 

True mediumship , w T hich is that of the ripe 
spirit, needs no development, no elaborate process 
to render it available. It is the spurious medium- 
ship, that acts only in conjunction with the agencies 
of the elemental plane, and through the develop- 
ment of this elemental-astral body, by abnormal 
lines of evolution, that requires artificial develop- 
ment. 

True mediumship is a possession of the spirit : 
spurious, abnormalty-developed mediumship repre- 
sents only the powers stolen from others, and 
bought from the spirits of the elemental plane at the 
cost of the future freedom of the unfortunate 
psychics, who have thus entangled themselves in 
the net of the Serpent-men. 



150 PROBLEMS OF MEDIUMSHIP 

The materials that compose man's earthly form 
have passed through many stages and all degrees 
of evolution ; and through it all the nature soul 
was the animating principle up to the point at 
which the higher and the lower soul reach the 
dividing line. 

There the process ended, leaving the materials 
in the ape-man stage, which is the nearest to the 
man that nature can evolve in conjunction with 
the astral seed-form to give the type. 

Man of the higher soul had no need to be in any 
of those lower types. He never was in any of 
them, the nature soul being sufficient to animate 
and control the evolution, on those lower planes, of 
the mere form of flesh man wears. 

Man's soul never will be in any of those lower 
types. Although he may sink to the lower con- 
ditions, and become ever so degraded — so much of 
the mere brute in his instincts and his actions — 
and may even become as the lowest of the aborigines, 
he is still a soul of that higher polarity, that higher 
creation made in the image of the Divine, and as 
such he retains, even in his lowest stage of degrada- 
tion, a thread of affiliation to the higher type to 
which he belongs. 

The idea that only the man-type survives 
through eternity is again responsible for the 
erroneous doctrine that man as a soul unit has 
come up through all things and all forms of created 
life to find his climax of evolution in the human 
type, absorbing all the others in his personality, 



EVOLUTION OF THE BODY 151 

and extinguishing them thereby. This vampirish 
conception of the human type is not supported by 
any evidence of such extinction of all other types, 
because on Earth man and the lower types are 
existing side by side, and assuredly there is the same 
testimony to the continued existence of all types in 
the Spirit World that there is to the existence of 
the human — that is, men and animals, and all 
forms of things on Earth, are declared by spirits 
to be existing in a higher stage of evolution, and 
are seen by clairvoyants as existing co-equally 
with the existence of the man-type. 

This material stage is not the end of evolution, 
but only one step in the long ladder of progression ; 
wherefore the tedious process of passing through 
all those lower forms, from rocks and plants and 
insects up to man, would surely be a waste of time 
for a soul of the higher creation. 

Souls of the man-type, who have yielded to 
temptations again and again, and w T ho, when 
returned to the material body to obtain a new 
chance of redeeming their lost superiority, elect 
instead to repeat their former mistakes and renew 
their degrading practices, their brutish cruelties, 
do at last incarnate in forms that reproduce the 
character of the spirit : and thus they emerge into 
material life in such degraded replicas of the 
Divine Image, in a type so closely akin to the gorilla 
that naturalists may be forgiven the erroneous 
idea that such men are the next stage upw r ards 
from that missing link. 



152 PROBLEMS OF MEDIUMSHIP 

Such souls as have sunk to this lowest point do 
display the bestial ferocity and worse than animal 
passions, but they are not a proof that man 
originally, as created by God, was of that character, 
nor that man has come up through all the lower 
types to culminate in a state of aboriginal brutality 
as a necessary part of evolution. 

Such souls as are of that low T type are old in 
evil ; not young in evolution in good. They are, 
it is true, climbing up again where the desire to 
climb dominates ; or it may be that some will sink 
even lower than any earth condition can support, 
and will pass to those hells of the spirit spheres of 
our planet in the nether polarity that are destined 
to destruction in the final end of the planet 
Earth. 

What the ultimate fate of such souls will be 
cannot be dogmatically asserted. The fact that the 
soul is in its nature immortal would indicate that, 
even for those spirits in the depths of hell, there is 
a possibility of redemption at last. 

Man in his original state was never of the lower 
polarities. He does not enter into their conditions 
now, although he affiliates himself to them and 
controls them. He has his type, and they have their 
types ; and it was not till man, in the personality 
of Adam, lost his kingship over the lower nature 
realm that the man-soul entered into the dense 
bodily form of the lower nature elements. 

Types are lines of demarcation between entities. 
A perfected type does not amalgamate with any 



EVOLUTION OF THE BODY 153 

other and survive ; it becomes extinct in the 
attempt to amalgamate. 

It is only in the formative stage that fusion of 
types takes place. Individuals of different varieties 
of a type do amalgamate and produce new variations 
on their original types, but the broad features that 
mark out the separate types remain : as, for instance, 
the man-type, which is always that of the human 
soul, although climate and other agencies produce 
an immense variety of the human types. 

The lower we descend in the scale of evolution, 
the less powerful becomes the influence of type. 
Hence, in the vegetable kingdom, it is possible to 
produce combinations that survive and form new 
types. That, however, is because the vegetable 
world is very closely akin to the elemental plane, 
and it is on the elemental plane that types are 
formed and perfected before they emerge into 
separate individual units. It is also on that plane 
that one type devours another, and the higher 
absorbs the lower and extinguishes it. The 
elemental plane is the vampire region, and it is 
for exactly that reason that the astral-elemental 
body, being the connecting link with that plane, 
shows a vampirish, parasitic propensity, if it is 
in any way artificially stimulated by the mag- 
netism of that plane. 

The idea that man has come up through all the 
lower forms of life, and absorbed them into his 
personality, has surely originated with a seer who 
has the power of vision on the elemental plane, and 



154 PROBLEMS OF MEDIUMSHIP 

who has watched the process going on there, and 
then imagined that he was beholding the process 
oi man's evolution as a soul. 

Matter, having come up through the lower 
types, retains a certain degree of affinity to the 
type through which it was evolved originally, and 
the idea that a man was a tiger, a stag, a fox. a 
rat, a wolf, a lamb, an ox, and that he reverts at 
times to the brutish sentiments of his type has a 
foundation in the fact that, if man allows his higher 
self to be subordinated by inferior influences, and 
yields to the passionate impulses that he shares in 
common with the brutes, and expresses through 
the bodily form derived from the lower nature 
realm, the affinity of the material body with the animal 
types will cause the man-soul to be drawn down, 
and lose his full control over that material body, so 
that it, in partnership with that elemental-astral 
body, will re-establish the rapport between the 
material form and those conditions of the lower 
polarity through which the form of matter was 
evolved. 

The werewolf, the ox-man, the satyr, the mer- 
maid, and other combined types in the Elemental- 
astral Plane, do become visible to clairvoyants of 
even a very small degree of power on that plane, 
because the Elemental-astral body is so nearly 
material that it can easily be seen while it is attached 
to some living personality in the flesh. 

Those combined types are parasites, and they 
are always attached as obsessing influences to 



EVOLUTION OF THE BODY 155 

some psychic person if they are visible to clair- 
voyance. 

These are certainly not astral spirits, but 
elemental ones. To see them indicates danger to 
the seer ; they are haunting some one in the flesh. 
They are expressions of souls that have known 
incarnation in far back ages when amalgamation 
on the elemental plane was more possible than it is 
to-day. Even with these spirits, it may be observed 
that the human type dominates, and is preserved 
as a link to that higher state these unfortunates 
cannot re-enter. 

When you see a spirit of the man-type joined to 
an animal, a bird, a fish, a plant, a reptile, you may 
always know it is in the conditions of the Elemental- 
astral Plane, where alone such combinations are 
possible, and that the spirit has sunk into amal- 
gamation with the lower-soul polarity, and lost a 
part of his heritage as the man-type. 

So also do all symbols that combine the lower 
and the higher types show their affiliation to that 
plane, and the controlling influence to be that of 
the ruling spirits there. Both the spirits and their 
symbols indicate thus the lower plane of evolution 
as their realm. Such spirits are in the polarity of 
the nature soul. 

The same statement applies to those Gods and 
Goddesses who are represented by these mixed 
types of animals and humans. 

No matter w 7 hat symbolical interpretations are 
given to explain the mixture, nor what beauty and 



156 PROBLEMS OF MEDIUMSHIP 

ideality, and even truth, is enshrined in the 
teachings that are built up around the images of 
these Gods and Goddesses, nor what wealth of 
philosophic truth and religious mysticism are 
incorporated in the teachings of their occult schools, 
the use of these combined types as representative of 
their Deities is the damning fact that, to a spirit of 
the higher spheres, gives the clear indication of the 
origin of the whole in that Elemental-astral Plane, 
which is the only region in spirit life where that 
combination is possible. 

Volumes might be written upon this one subject 
alone, and its important bearing upon, not only 
mediumship, but those religions that seek to control 
men's thoughts of God and the Eternal Truths. 

The lesson for mediums is in the indication that 
teachings derived through these sources are of 
necessity tainted, and a means of misguidance, not 
of help, and all awakening of such dual consciousness 
is a danger signal. Hence, when a man or woman 
has that curious sensation of having belonged to 
some type of the nature realm, that is a sign those 
persons are allowing too close affiliation between 
themselves in their higher soul and the magnetic 
conditions of the Elemental-astral Plane. 

For some reason, either through a course of 
development or proximity to some one who radiates 
that form of magnetism, they are developing on 
to that plane, and are going back in partnership 
with their elemental-astral body to the conditions of 
the past state of the materials of their Earth forms. 



EVOLUTION OF THE BODY 157 

Every kind of mediumship ought at once to be 
given up if this is taking place, for it shows that 
an abnormal stage exists. 

If no conscious development is taking place, and 
no intentional effort to gain mediumship is being 
made, then a complete change of conditions and 
of associates should be made, because there is 
some magnetic influence at work — possibly quite 
unintentionally — that is producing a development 
on to the astral plane. 

There are many signs by which development on 
to that plane may be known as foreshadowed. It 
is in the first stage that such development can be 
arrested without great harm having been done, but 
every step farther means three times the difficulty 
in turning back again ; and at the present day, 
when so many persons are affiliated to occult 
societies, and developing every variety of magnetic 
affinities, the importance of associations cannot be 
too clearly emphasised. No one ought to allow 
that reawakening of consciousness in the inferior 
body. 

When the Eastern schools teach that the soul of 
a man came up through the lower realm, and can, 
or did, ever return into that of a rat or any other 
creature, those teachers show ignorance and not 
knowledge of what true evolution means, or why 
there is such a law as that of polarities. It likewise 
shows that the seer who describes that mode of 
evolution is looking at the Elemental-astral Plane, 
and is in affiliation to its conditions. 



158 PROBLEMS OF MEDIUMSHIP 

Like a rat in character the man may be, but 
even so he possesses something the rat never had. 
That something remains, even though it survives 
only in a submerged condition. It must be repeated 
over and over again, that even the most degraded 
of the human type possesses something no lower 
type ever did or could possess, and by virtue of 
that one indestructible spark of God-given manhood, 
that no submergence in lower nature conditions 
can totally extinguish, man will again some time 
arise, and find, through the path of repentance, 
the way back to the Divine heritage he has 
forfeited. 

In the New Testament there is a passage that 
relates that the Christ spirit in those three days 
that intervened between His death and His 
resurrection visited the spirits in prison. May we 
not believe that the Redeemer gave then, even to 
souls so lost, that vision of Himself which no lesser 
power could convey to those dark realms, and 
showed the way of possible redemption even for 
the lowest sinners ? 

No one may dogmatise as to the interpretation 
to be put on those brief statements that have come 
down through long centuries, but the broad law 
by which the higher soul can redeem and draw up 
those who are in the conditions of the lower soul 
has more than one explanation possible. Re- 
demption is a law always insisted on, as well as 
the laws of judgment and of condemnation. 



CHAPTER XI 

THE STORY OF EDEN 

WHY THE SOUL OF MAN WAS UNITED TO THE BODY 
OF THE NATURE REALM 

The first man and woman are the representatives 
of the higher soul of Earth, and are shown in their 
Eden stage of perfectly negative good and evil 
possibilities. 

The higher soul on Earth has the right of choice,, 
and can elect to follow the good or the evil. path, 
but has not the power to select the conditions in 
which that choice will be made. Only the guardian 
angels can decide so all-embracing a question. 

Perfect Good is a positive quality, and implies 
conquest over temptation ; not merely that 
innocence that has not known temptation and triaL 
Adam and Eve were only negatively good ; and, 
whether we regard the story of Eden as an allegory, 
symbolising the story of the first race of physical 
man, or as the actual history of a first man and 
woman, the lessons to be learnt from it are equally 
valuable. 

Their first state was that of perfect innocence 
that was only ignorance of the possibilities of eviL 
Then came the tempter, instigating first the woman, 
then the man through the woman, to taste of the 
pleasures of the senses and the passions of the lower 
soul ; those debasing pleasures of which the lost 

159 m 



160 PROBLEMS OF MEDIUMSHIP 

spirits of the Astral World had made themselves 
past-masters. 

The story is, in fact, an account of how Adam 
and Eve were induced to put themselves into 
affinity with the lowest conditions of the Elemental- 
astral Plane. The Bible account is quite clear 
in its statement that the temptation came from an 
evil source ; no garbled version can put any other 
aspect on the action of the Serpent, who tempted 
the first man and woman. 

The bodies Adam and Eve wore at first were 
derived from the physical element, but were an 
expression of matter in an ethereal condition, 
such as belongs to the Eden stage of evolution. 
They were the crowning type of physical creation. 
As beings of the higher polarity of the soul, that 
is the type of the Divine Creator, they possessed 
those more etherealised bodies of the Earth 
materials — dust, but the dust of that Eden realm. 
The animals in the garden would also be the 
highest of their types. 

The Earth in its infancy would have a very deep 
envelope of astral fluids in a pure and negative 
condition, intersphered with the elemental plane of 
embryo life, and covered by a thin rime of pure 
spirit essences that had been distilled by all those 
spirits of the lower soul of nature, who had already 
evolved their spirit spheres. 

All the spirit spheres pertaining to man's evolu- 
tion would be only faintly foreshadowed, not yet 
accomplished states. Transition to spirit life 



THE STORY OF EDEX 161 

would be easy at first, for the elemental plane was 
only as a w T ide, clear river, with no entangling weeds 
to imprison the soul in its passage through it. 

Man of the Adamite creation before " the Fall " 
was so much above the inferior creation that his 
light body could travel over the Earth as a cloud 
floats across the sky, and casts only a shadow as it 
passes. He was not impeded in his actions by a 
dense body of the elements in the lower polarity. 
He was on Earth to learn its conditions, and his 
body was of fine earth materials, but was like the 
earth-bound body of the Earth plane, which is 
composed of matter, but in so fine a condition it is 
seldom visible to the dense degree of sight that 
the conditions of the matter that clothes man now 
requires. 

As man of the higher polarity, nothing in the 
nature realm could harm Adam ; no ocean drown 
him, no fire consume, no beast of the forest or 
field injure. His will was the controlling power 
over all the lower forces that constituted man's 
kingdom. 

Vast possibilities awaited Adamite man if he 
had resisted the temptations of the Serpent Race, 
and had turned instead to see what God had to 
offer him in the form of knowledge and power. 
There is always for every soul a choice of paths. 

Adam and Eve were warned. They were not 
shown what was the nature of the forbidden fruit. 
If they had been shown, they would probably 
have eaten of it just the same, because the desire 



162 PROBLEMS OF MEDIUMSHIP 

for personal experience is very strong in most 
people, and all the warnings given, all the most 
impassioned appeals that can be made, seldom 
serve to hold men and women back from sampling 
the flavour and discovering the nature of the for- 
bidden fruits : especially is this so when mystery 
surrounds the tree of knowledge, and vague sug- 
gestions and many allurements envelop it with 
promises of powers to be gained, the desires of the 
heart won. 

The tree of forbidden fruits in the garden of 
Eden was developed from the vast roots that 
belonged to the Astral Era, and was the product of 
the knowledge of Astral men. 

Physical man was intended to evolve his own 
scheme of life, and acquire for himself knowledge 
in conditions that were different from those of the 
Astral World. 

All the seeds of astral things that could be of 
service to Adamite man were already evolved into 
material expression, and Adamite man was to 
solve for himself Nature's problems, and win his 
crown of knowledge in doing so. There is false 
knowledge as well as true ; things that a man may 
learn that only bring death as the fruits of the 
powers conferred. There are illusions that appear 
as secrets of power ; wisdom that is of the evil line, 
and brings only destruction in its train. Such was 
the knowledge of the forbidden tree. 

That evil knowledge was the only possession the 
lost spirits of the astral race, who were attached 



THE STORY OF EDEN 163 

as parasites to the astral plane, had brought with 
them, and it had taken root and flourished as a 
mere broken stump of a tree in that astral plane. 
It was not really on Earth, but was of semi-mental 
growth, and it embodied that affiliation to the 
nature realm, which the astral spirits, who were 
not all evil, but only unprogressed, had acquired 
in passing into semi-material envelopment. 

This tree of astral knowledge had its counterpart 
and correspondence in certain of the astral roots. 
Its fruits were the ripe fruits of men's experiences ; 
to taste of them was to know the pleasures of the 
lower soul and those sex passions to which the lost 
astral spirits had become enslaved in their own 
world — pleasures that they could present in almost 
any guise that would allure mankind. 

On the forbidden tree Eve saw what seemed a 
perfect fruit, luscious, tempting to the eyes ; an 
innocent and harmless fruit that could surely have 
nothing evil in it. 

Guarding the tree was the appearance of a serpent. 

The affinity this astral tree would possess to all 
astral things would enable one of the lost spirits 
to throw around the tree the appearance of the 
Serpent, as though he were actually in Eden. 
The aura of the astral tree would act as a mirror 
to hold the reflection from the astral plane, and 
make it vivid with the semblance of a reality ; 
the echoing properties of the astral fluid would 
give to the reflected form of the Serpent a voice 
that was also merely a projection. 



164 PROBLEMS OF MEDIUMSHIP 

The whole machinery for projection at present 
lies in the astral fluids ; whether it be a wireless 
message sent from a material instrument and 
received on another, or the far more subtle pro- 
jections sent on the astral fluids from the discarnate 
minds of spirits. 

The voice of the Serpent seemed to come from the 
branches of the tree, but there was, in reality, no 
Serpent in Eden ; the Serpent was in that dark 
void that has been already described as rising from 
the elemental plane. 

The Serpent spoke with the voice and speech of 
a man, but he could not show the form of a man, 
only that of a reptile. He had no share in the life 
of Earth, nor of the Spirit World. He had lost his 
hold on the man-type of evolution, and could only 
show himself as one of the lower forms of created 
things. He could only show himself in the form of 
a serpent, because the subtle, death-dealing, 
treacherously evil thing that the serpent has ever 
since that time represented was the expression of 
the mentality oi that tempting spirit ; a spirit 
man who was mind without body, possessed of 
nothing, and who was in that lower polarity of the 
nature world in which man can assume the form of 
the lower creation, but not that of the higher, 
from which he is shut out. 

The Serpent in Eden has been called " Satan, 
the Prince of Evil." That is a misnomer, for Satan 
only prompted the Serpent-man to act in tempting 
Eve and Adam. 



THE STORY OF EDEN 165 

The Serpent was merely the slave of Satan ; 
only the servant of the Prince of Evil. The Serpent 
symbol represents the slave souls of evil ; while 
Satan is Lord of the Evil Realms. 

There is a kingship of evil as well as of good, and 
the supreme tempter, who is a spirit of the Universe, 
and whose province is to test the quality of man's 
virtues, is possessed of a splendour of intellectual 
powers only second to that of Supreme Good ; 
and has, moreover, the grandeur of personality 
and dominance in individuality, which the con- 
troller of the mighty forces of evil in a great universe 
would of necessity possess. If evil were only of 
the slave-soul type of the Serpent mind, it would 
never have possessed the power it exercises over 
many fine mentalities. 

It is this Divine spark of true greatness, seen 
even in the Prince of Evil, that gives to Evil the 
immortality that makes of it a twin force in the 
Universe, and an eternal shadow that follows 
always on the path of Good, until the perfect realm 
of the Divine is reached, in which even this majestic 
presence is thrust back and shut out and Good 
reigns supreme. 

The Serpent is not Satan, but it represents all 
those low T er polarities of evil in their most 
treacherous aspects. When w r e see that symbol, 
we need have no illusions as to the realm that it 
gives affiliation to, nor as to the character of the 
knowledge the Serpent imparts. The whole 
story of Eden conveys to man to-day the message 



166 PROBLEMS OF MEDIUMSHIP 

of a warning against the Serpent and all his 
wiles. 

The Serpent shows all the twisting, wriggling, 
prevaricating subterfuges of coward evil that will 
not fight in the open, but seeks by subtle ways to 
injure and destroy. It shows the secret methods 
by which evil poisons truth and perverts its message. 
It expresses the deceptive character of the poison 
that is spread in darkness, yet can be made to 
assume the guise of Truth and the aspects of Light ; 
and the illusions by which it secures dominion 
over body and soul, even as the Serpent threw the 
glamour of many illusions around the forbidden 
tree, and gave the semblance of beauty and whole- 
someness to its corrupting fruits. It show r s that 
from the Serpent line come those suggestions of 
deep mysteries and half-hidden power on the occult 
planes, of which the whole has never yet been 
revealed, even to its highest initiates, but only that 
semi-revelation of secret powers that, as it has 
no boundaries to mark where it ends, allows of the 
Serpent minds advancing their claims to anything 
and everything that the progress of the world 
gains for mankind, as a part of the hidden know- 
ledge they do not deem it wise to reveal to that 
world until some other mind discovers those things 
and makes them public : a partial revelation that 
allures by its suggestions of so many mysteries 
still to be revealed, and implies a boundless power 
held always in reserve. 

The Serpent also represents the type of the 



THE STORY OF EDEN 167 

ruthless destroyer that once it has coiled its soft, 
yielding, creeping form around its victim never 
relaxes its hold again until it has crushed all life out. 

It shows the smooth serpent-tongue that beguiles, 
persuades, and lies with the aspect of truth ; 
the servile deference to good, with the suggestion 
that the Serpent is not really the servant of evil, 
but one who comes to give knowledge that will 
awaken the dormant powers ; that, although the 
Serpent seems evil and a tempter, it is none the less 
itself a seeker after the way of morality, and a 
worshipper of truth, on whom the hard task of 
appearing in a repelling form has been unwillingly 
imposed ; in the very suggestions conveying the 
poison of distrust of the motives that had inspired 
the prohibition of that mystic tree and its alluring 
fruits. 

There are likewise the gentle, patient suggestions 
of the possession of a knowledge that is not in 
reality evil, but only greater than that of the God 
who had forbidden the eating # of the fruit that 
could convey the knowledge which the Serpent 
guarded because it was so great a treasure it must 
not be lightly and freely given away. 

There was thus the subtle suggestion that, if 
Eve and Adam ate of this fruit, their ignorance 
would vanish, and they would be as the Gods 
themselves. It is the age-old appeal that evil 
makes to ignorance and innocence, and to that 
desire for wider knowledge and greater pow T er that 
ignorance and innocence is conscious of lacking. 



168 PROBLEMS OF MEDIUMSHIP 

Is not the whole future history of the line of evil 
occultism, that was to link Adamite man to the 
Serpent-men and their type of " wisdom/' and 
corrupt one religion after another, and pervert the 
powers of mediumship again and again through all 
the ages, foreshadowed in this very brief story of 
the scene in the garden of Eden, with the Serpent 
as the servile procurer of the Devil and all his 
brood of evil spirits. 

Can we not understand, in reading the story, 
how the pure line of the higher mysticism of the 
superior soul, and its beautiful power of visioning 
the things of the spirit, which was to be the link 
between man and the angels, and all the capacity 
for receiving the inspirations of the Divine Mind, 
that were a part of the natural heritage of Adam 
and Eve as man and woman of a new era and a 
fresh creation of that Earth world which those 
Serpent-men had in their era defiled, became 
poisoned at their source by the affiliation to that 
Serpent line, when Eve, and Adam following her, 
yielded to the suggestions of the Serpent and 
accepted his fruit. 

Communion with the denizens of the Spirit 
Spheres should be the natural heritage of every one ; 
a possession of the higher soul of man, who alone of 
all creation has the power of communication with 
those from whom he is parted. He would have 
retained that power if he had not yielded to 
temptation, and sunk himself in the conditions of 
the lower polarity in which till then he had no share. 



THE STORY OF EDEN 169 

That apple in Eden was no fruit at all. That 
tree bore no fruits. Its period of productivity 
was over, and all the fruits it had borne were 
garnered into the spirit w T orld of the astral era. 
The seeds from its fruits had already been sown 
in the soil of the material Earth, and all that was 
left of the tree itself was this, its astral shell existing 
as a parasite on that elemental plane. A vampire 
tree, belonging to the super- vampires and extending 
its root fibres out all over the elemental plane to 
suck up life from everything that could be affiliated 
to it. No wonder Eve and Adam were forbidden 
to touch it. 

The apple on it was purely an illusion, such an 
illusion as is created to-day when once concentration 
on the Serpent Tree has been accomplished. That 
apple was created on the mental plane by the 
Serpent himself, and given a temporary form and 
substance, as a materialisation of a thought form 
of anything can be given by the physical element 
blending with the astral fluids through the medium- 
ship of some living person in the flesh to unite them. 

The suggestion of everything that appeals to 
and delights the senses, and the lower sensatory 
fibres of the soul was embodied in that visionary 
fruit. 

That which it did contain, however, was the 
quintessence of the fluids on the Elemental-astral 
Plane ; those fluids that give life on that plane 
to brain and body in the elemental-astral envelope : 
that spongy, absorbent body that is the link between 



170 PROBLEMS OF MEDIUMSHIP 

matter and the astral fluids, and between man of 
the higher soul and the whole creation of the lower. 

Those astral fluids, distilled through the physical 
elements on the elemental plane, were an elixir of 
the magnetic fires from the outer zone of life, the 
creative essences of the lower polarities from the 
pillar of fire ; and with that elixir was combined 
some of that heavy narcotic essence from the 
negative regions of darkness that gave a numbness 
to brain and body, and could produce the suspension 
of the will power. Lastly, there was the mental 
influence of the Serpent himself that this draught of 
strange juices conveyed to all who would drink of 
it, and that made instantly a link between the 
Serpent line and Eve and Adam when they tasted 
that forbidden fruit. 

It may be noted here that hypnotic treatments 
from anyone who has affiliated to the Serpent line 
will connect the subject of those treatments with 
them also, however good and innocent that person 
may be ; the operation of the law is the same 
to-day as in the days of Eden. The results of 
hypnotic treatments from some persons has shown 
this to be so. 

The juice of the apple in Eden would be like 
strong wine to exhilarate and stimulate the 
emotions on the lower plane, and a narcotic drug 
to stultify and paralyse the faculties of the 
intellect, the reasoning powers, and the moral 
consciousness. That magnetic and hypnotic com- 
bination has the same power now, and can also 



THE STORY OF EDEN 171 

be translated into material drugs that come from 
the elements in the astral plane, and are absorbed 
by certain plants. 

That fluid from the forbidden fruit would per- 
meate the whole body and blood of the first man 
and woman of the physical line who ever tasted of 
it. It would transform their very constitutions, 
giving to them a share in the astral element at 
once ; and by the inflow of the astral ether, the 
power of vision on that plane would come also — 
a power of visioning astral conditions that physical 
man does not possess, unless he has also put himself 
upon that plane by absorbing the magnetic fluids 
distilled on it, even as Adam and Eve absorbed 
them. 

In a flash, as of lightning, they would both see 
what that tree really was. Its origin ; the Astral 
World ; the gigantic evil that the Serpent and all 
his line represent ; their own helplessness in the 
face of such colossal power upon that Elemental- 
astral Plane as was then revealed. 

It would be well if the aspirant for psychic 
powers to-day could realise also the colossal power 
possessed by the evil spirits on that plane, where 
man is a pigmy beside those mental giants. 

Adam and Eve would suddenly be conscious of 
their nakedness and lack of all covering for the 
mysteries of their sex ; and of the possibilities of 
evil passions to which they had been blind, even 
as children are blind in infancy and innocence, and 
as happily unconscious. 



172 PROBLEMS OF MEDIUMSHIP 

No wonder that they trembled at the voice of 
God calling to them, and that they hid themselves 
in their excess of shame and horror at the revela- 
tion of evil that their disobedience had invoked. 

The knowledge and subtlety of the Serpent mind 
is shown in many phases in the Eden story. The 
lost spirits of the astral era were imprisoned in the 
dark void within that cone, which is their hollow 
tree. They had no share in the life of the physical 
Earth, and could have none. They were attached 
to Earth but as parasites only. They had 
the strong life of positive mentalities that made 
their evil souls dominant in spite of having lost all 
but their mental possessions, and thus they had 
survived in union with the lower soul of Earth. 
Their powerful minds keep intact their individu- 
alities, and the dark negative region of that hollow 
cone gives them a home. 

All things in the lower nature realm that had 
sprung from astral seeds were so immersed in matter 
that they were quite impenetrable for these astral 
spirits. They could assume the likeness of an 
animal, but they could not enter into affiliation 
with any animal, nor do more than clothe themselves 
in a thought-created picture of the only thing on 
Earth that was akin to their mentalities, and that 
was a serpent, a reptile. 

Man's instinctive recoil from the reptiles is not 
due to repulsion to the irresponsible creatures 
themselves, but to the thing they symbolise. 

The dark spirits desired mediums who might 



THE STORY OF EDEN 173 

bridge the chasm between themselves and the active 
lives of Earth, and they understood the laws of 
affinity, and by what law mediumship is governed 1 
also how mediums might be developed. 

They knew that Adam and his wife, once 
affiliation was established, could be made an avenue 
to power on Earth again, and their offspring be 
links in a chain of lives that would restore some 
measure of affinity between mankind and them- 
selves. Botanists know that when a new element 
is introduced into plant life it is the succeeding 
reproductions of the plant in which the stronger 
influence of the new element can be perfected. Thus 
Adam and Eve would sin not alone for themselves, 
in establishing affiliation to the Serpent-men, but 
for their posterity. 

Wherefore, when God banished the first man and 
woman from Eden, and put an angel with a flaming 
sword to bar the way to their return, it was not as a 
punishment, but as an act of mercy in cutting them 
off from that tree of evil knowledge, and from the 
power of the Serpent-men. The Serpent had created 
between his tree and his dupes a force of attraction 
that would have drawn them back again and again 
to taste of its intoxications when the horror passed 
and the shame became deadened by familiarity ; 
and he could have held more and more free inter- 
course with them as time passed on, and evil 
became gradually an attractive instead of a 
repulsive thing. 

God sent Adam and his wife down into the 



1 74 PROBLEMS OF MEDIUMSHIP 

conditions of the lower polarity to which they had 
affiliated, but He gave to them the same protection 
He had given to all things in the nature realm — 
the protection that is given by envelopment in 
matter in its dense form. Never again would 
Adam and his offspring possess those light ethereal 
bodies of matter that were as gauze is to steel 
armour in relation to the materiality of the Earth ; 
not till death frees man from his dense form can 
he realise what that finer body was like. 

Adamite man, in receiving complete immersion 
in matter, is shielded by it from attacks from spirits 
of the low r er planes. That body also deadens the 
acuteness of his spiritual perceptions, and makes it 
more difficult for spirits to tempt him. He is 
thereby also cut off from the spirit side of life, 
and left to his own initiative to a great extent. 
He can develop originality and the powers of his 
own intellect. Moreover, the material body pro- 
tects the spirit form within it from the irritating 
effects of the conditions of the lower polarity in 
which man on Earth lives ; conditions that would 
otherwise be very acutely felt by the sensitive 
spirit of the higher polarity. Persons who have 
developed to the extent of thinning this protecting 
envelope are quite conscious of this irritating 
result of unwise development. 

Man should value his Earth body very highly, 
and preserve it carefully till in the natural course of 
events his spirit is ripe for transition to the next 
stage of existence. 



THE STORY OF EDEN 175 

Adam and Eve, in descending into the denser 
conditions of matter, took on them all the conditions 
of the lower polarity. They ate and drank of the 
lower elements as the animals do. They reproduced 
their species under the same laws ; w T ore their 
bodies of the denser materials, without being able 
to free themselves from them, and in doing so lost 
their power of holding communion with the 
spiritual realms ; and between them and their 
Eden land there flowed a river of Death, and there 
w T as interposed between them and the higher spheres 
that sac of the Elemental-astral Plane that is as 
an elastic net, yet of too tenacious fibre to admit of 
the passage of any spirit incarnate upon Earth 
that would pass to spirit life. Not till death severs 
the ties can man free himself from the elements of 
nature realm, and the conditions of limited power 
that belong to his probationary period of detention 
in the lower polarity, nor escape his share in the 
heritage of Adam's sin. 



N 



CHAPTER XII. 

DEVELOPMENT ON MENTAL LINES OF MEDIUMSHIP. 
ITS RELATION TO THE ELEMENTAL- ASTRAL PLANE. 
THE ASTRAL MIRROR OF THAT PLANE. THE RELATION 
OF CLAIRVOYANCE AND CLAIRAUDIENCE TO THIS 
PLANE. TRUE MEDIUMSHIP AND THAT WHICH IS 
ONLY THE EFFECTS OF VAMPIRISM. 

DANGERS OF DEVELOPMENT ON CERTAIN LINES. 

All persons of fine mental powers or artistic 
temperaments require to understand the true 
relations of mediumship and the Elemental-astral 
Plane, its mental regions and the mirror produced 
by the astral aura of that plane, because there is 
a very great delusion prevalent concerning the 
safety supposed to be insured by developing 
mediums on the lines of mental power rather 
than on the lines of the material expression of 
all forms of mediumship. In reality, mental 
development opens the door to a host of dangers 
on a very subtle plane, and the possibility of 
projection of many illusions and much false 
teaching. 

The Oriental schools of occultism, as well as 
those psychic associations founded under the 
guidance of spirits of the old Antediluvians, give 
directions for development on mental lines that 
all tend to put the students into affiliation to the 
astral zone by thinning the material envelope. 

176 



DEVELOPMENT OF MEDIUMSHIP 177 

These errors have become so firmly incorporated 
in those systems, and in the East are made part 
of their religious teachings, that it is hopeless to 
combat their effects among those persons who 
have accepted those teachings ; but there are 
many who are on a neutral plane in regard to 
these things, and for those people warnings of 
dangers may avail to arrest their trafficking with 
the dangers incurred. There are various signs by 
which psychics may know when they are on 
dangerous ground, and should go back, if possible, 
into the safe shelter of their material envelopment. 

The thinning of the aura till it becomes as a 
gauze veil is one sign. The hearing of voices in 
mixed murmuring of meaningless waves of sound 
is another, for both states indicate that the physical 
element in the body has become diluted with too 
large a proportion of astral fluids, and is ceasing 
to protect the ego. 

When therefore sensitive persons begin to 
hear those myriad voices, or waves upon waves of 
harmonies, that are repetitions again and again of 
the same theme or successions of the same set of 
harmonies ; when they hear the chanting of songs 
in an endless chorus of voices ; or see stars falling 
from the sky and changing into angels' faces or 
flowers as they fall ; or any other metamorphosis 
taking place as by a species of legerdemain ; 
or if they see rainbow lights, rainbow paths, that 
radiate away in all directions as from the centre 
of a great wheel ; see the halo of a rainbow over 



178 PROBLEMS OF MEDIUMSHIP 

themselves, or have it described as over them — 
such persons may know they are on the verge of 
entering the conditions of that higher Astral- 
elemental Plane. 

The rainbow is its symbol, and the rainbow arch 
is as its gateway. The rainbow's reflections are 
shimmering over the astral body of the sensitive, 
because the envelope has become so thin, so 
transparent, the astral fluids have become so 
predominant in the aura and radiate so freely, 
that it holds the rainbow light reflected on to it 
from the astral mirror of the Earth plane, and 
reproduces them. Such an astral body is far too 
thin for protective purposes, and far too much in 
affinity to the astral plane to give any results of 
a psychic nature on any other plane. 

That rainbow gateway is very beautiful to 
behold, and suggests many most interesting 
mysteries as hidden behind it. It has a great 
many appearances. Its attainment is like opening 
a door with a key obtained by reaching a certain 
degree of astral etherealisation. 

The person who attains it and passes above that 
rainbow gate, or arch, enters the full conditions 
of that higher astral plane of the elemental stage. 
It is in no sense any part of the true Spirit 
Spheres. 

To attain it means to lose the power of entering 
spirit life. 

To attempt to enter and fail to do so means that 
the sensitive cannot again re-enter the Earth body, 



DEVELOPMENT OF MEDIUMSHIP 179 

but will remain attached to it during its span of 
life without control over its functions. 

A clairvoyant would see the spirit in the astral 
form, outside the physical body always, but attached 
to it, so that the Earth body lives, but as a paralytic, 
absolutely helpless, yet alive ; with the automatic 
functions of feeding and sleeping in active oper- 
ation, but with no mental powers — a condition of 
living death. 

The public do not know how T many pupils, 
trained for the " rainbow path," have ended in 
that way, or died in the struggle to regain their 
bodies. 

When therefore a person finds that he or she 
can hear those weird musical harmonies, or voices 
in perpetual conversation, the words confused 
and rambling, or can see rainbow lights or rainbow 
anything, every sort of development ought to be 
at once stopped. 

If the individual is not consciously developing 
as a psychic, but is using excessive power in brain 
work or prolonged mental study, it will be no less 
needful to pause and discover whether a total 
change of environment and of labours will not 
effect a cure. Excess of mental stimulus, whether 
as a course of study or in connection with business 
or professional life, will tend to cause over activity 
of the astral body, even when the individual is 
not consciously developing anything. 

Even living among psychics, or joining associa- 
tions where psychics are, and associating with 



180 PROBLEMS OF MEDIUMSHIP 

persons already developed on those lines, will 
begin the process if there is a predisposition to 
such lines of evolution, due to the conditions of 
a former incarnation. 

Mediums all radiate magnetic force, and blend 
their forces with others, and the results are by no 
means always good. 

In any case, the appearance of a rainbow is a 
danger signal. 

The sensitive ought to change all his conditions, 
leave his present home and associates and, if 
possible, live elsewhere for a time. Any moment 
may bring a catastrophe, and the power over the 
Earth body be lost suddenly. 

Change of magnetic conditions is most important 
— change of climate, of occupation, of everything. 

Spiritualists know the importance of keeping 
the conditions of a circle unbroken, and the group 
of persons unchanged in order to keep distinct the 
one type of magnetic aura they are generating. 
A family group, a company of workers, a com- 
munity, a nation, all form smaller or larger circles, 
generating a type of magnetism that is their own 
distinctive aura ; an aura that has magnetic con- 
ditions to which each member of the group 
unconsciously responds sympathetically. 

This being so, a complete change means for a 
sensitive the introduction of new magnetic con- 
ditions, stranger elements. 

To go away from the familiar group breaks off 
the responsive state for a time, and ends any 



DEVELOPMENT OF MEDIUMSHIP 181 

artificial development due to the magnetic con- 
ditions of a circle of persons. Change of air for an 
invalid means more than change of scene and of 
climate ; its curative effect is often of a psychic 
character. 

If the value of the material body were better 
known, its protection would never be thrown 
away either consciously or unconsciously. 

There are, at the same time, many persons who 
may be classed as psychics who are, nevertheless, 
incapable of going beyond the stage at which their 
astral bodies become active absorbers — although 
they possess good mental powers and spiritual 
ideals. 

For ninety-nine out of a hundred who practise 
occult formulas there is never any pow T er developed 
beyond that of going out of the body and onto 
the elemental-astral region that encircles the Earth 
ball. They may be in a semi-conscious state, or 
they may develop full consciousness, but they 
cannot go beyond that region ; and, while they 
develop a limited degree of clairvoyance in relation 
to that plane it is always an artificial production, 
and depends on their being in association with 
those who are true seers, and from whom the power 
can be appropriated. 

These persons are, in fact, very exhausting 
parasites, and, even if good and moral, are still 
harmful to the community, because by exhausting 
more truly sensitive persons they cause those 
persons to lose their protecting shield of matter, 



182 PROBLEMS OF MEDIUMSHIP 

and, by connecting them with the astral plane, 
may open the way to ultimate obsession by astral 
intelligences. Where these semi-parasites are not 
moral, or are semi-sensual, self-indulgent psychics, 
they become a very active danger to any 
community, even if they are refined in type and 
of fine mental powers. 

Such psychics are the medium for the dissemi- 
nation of very questionable suggestions, and lines of 
teaching in which the evil is carefully veiled under 
quasi-culture and ideality. During their visits to 
the astral plane of Earth, they enjoy the society 
of many kindred spirits imprisoned on that plane, 
and serve as links to connect those spirits with 
sensitive and receptive persons in the flesh. 

There are, it must be remembered, many 
associations of " brothers and sisters " on the occult 
planes, and their correspondents in the earthly 
replicas of those associations, who allow themselves 
to indulge in all the pleasures of the senses when 
out of the Earth body and in the astral form. 
One and all of these are not only immoral, because 
of those indulgences, but are the active agents in 
connecting others with their own conditions. 

Whether these psychics see themselves as among 
a company of gallant knights and fair ladies, 
great masters of the magic arts with their attendant 
students, and persons from every era of the Earth's 
evolution and many countries, or as pilgrim souls 
initiated stage by stage into deeper and ever deeper 
mysteries and more and more elaborate symbolical 



DEVELOPMENT OF MEDIUMSHIP 183 

rituals ; or whether, as the pupils of the Oriental 
priesthoods, they enter upon their experiences 
under the aegis of religious aspirations, it is still 
that Elemental-astral Plane that they are affiliated 
to, and none of them can attain to any other 
more spiritual state. 

All those foolish mortals who ages ago acquired 
the power of functioning in their astral bodies, 
and all those pleasure-loving, semi-astral entities 
who compose that part of the population who 
derived their origin from Earth life, together with 
such persons now as can " function " in their 
etheric bodies — all live in the wide belt of elements 
that sweep round the Earth nightly ; held by the 
Earth's attraction, but repelled by the Sun's rays ; 
so that these elements are like a vast sea, flowing 
always in the direction away from the Sun and 
enclosed in that astral sac, or skin of the Earth, 
that has been described as so very elastic and 
possessed of such an amazing toughness and 
extraordinary ethereality of texture. 

Those persons who are in their etheric bodies 
and on this plane do see a wonderful shimmer 
of light over all things there that resembles the 
effect of moonlight, or even as of sunlight in some 
places, when seen through mists. An effect that 
has only a faint parallel in those magical mists 
that hover at sunrise and at sunset over swamps 
in tropic lands, and also produces prismatic effects. 

The reflecting properties in the astral element of 
this semi-material, semi-astral ether, do cause all 



184 PROBLEMS OF MEDIUMSHIP 

sorts of reflections to be thrown upon the luminous 
atmosphere, and to appear as realities surrounding 
either spirits or mortals who have developed 
these etheric bodies. 

Good religious persons entering this plane, 
instead of spirit life, will see all those rainbow 
lands, rainbow bodies ; will hear waves of harmony 
borne to their ears with no visible agency for their 
production ; will see beautiful visions of every 
conceivable kind, till they may be forgiven for 
not knowing that the real origin of all these wonders 
is the astral aura, and that they are, in truth, 
only reflections from the spirit spheres of the 
true Spirit World, mixed with thought creations 
from many minds, and thrown onto the astral mirror 
of our Earth to float on the rainbow-hued mists, 
and find reflection as myriad visions and as waves 
of multicoloured sounds. Light seems everywhere, 
as if thrown down by an invisible agency ; luminous 
draperies clothe the spirit forms seen walking in 
that light, that is, in truth, a mirror — the mirror 
of illusions — that gives everything objectivity on 
that plane by reflecting it from somewhere else. 

Beautiful haunting shapes are seen, or horrible 
abortions, born alike from brain and body on Earth. 
Things that are of the spirit may appear if the 
seer be of a spiritual development, but these 
also are only reflected onto this plane ; they have 
no existence there. 

Clairvoyance developed in the astral body by 
absorbing the astral fluids in large quantities in 



DEVELOPMENT OF MEDIUMSHIP 185 

excess of the spiritual development of the true 
spirit ego, gives only power of visioning on this 
plane, and accounts for the great multitude of 
things seen clairvoyantly that are still valueless, 
because illusions from this plane of mere reflections. 
Mental culture tends to develop this form of 
clairvoyance, because it is so affiliated to the mind. 

Persons with this development can be shown true 
visions reflected onto the surface of this astral 
mirror, but in that case a curtain of physical 
elements must be drawn over all but the one point 
of focus. In this way past events are shown as 
records, and future possibilities as mental pictures 
projected onto it. 

This form of visioning, however, requires the 
co-operation of spirits who are of high abilities, 
and can be used by both good and evil intelligences, 
it must not be forgotten. Neither must the average 
clairvoyant assume that he or she possesses the 
degree of clear sight that is required to enable the 
mortal to co-operate successfully with the spirit's 
guides, or that guides from the good planes will 
always be found ready to assume the task of 
co-operation ; far oftener it is selfish and vampirish 
spirits who are ready to assume the position of 
controls to all and sundry who wish to exercise 
clairvoyant powers. 

Even the true visions seen on this plane are, 
after all, only reflections from Spirit life, and to 
cultivate the pow 7 er of vision on this plane tends to 
divert power from development on the true Spirit 



186 PROBLEMS OF MEDIUMSHIP 

realms. Spirit life is reached by another path 
than that which leads through this plane. 

Nothing has done more to* confuse communi- 
cation with the Spirit Spheres than the existence of 
this astral mirror, and the enormous mass of things 
imprinted on its recording films during the lapse 
of ages. Joined to this we have the further in- 
fluence that is exerted by the spirits of that plane, 
whose kingdom it is, and whose power to manipu- 
late the conditions of their realm to produce an 
infinite variety of illusions is boundless. 

For example, a person who is affiliated to this 
plane and in the negative, semi-conscious state of 
half asleep, with all his bodily functions resting, 
will, nevertheless, feel as though he were travelling 
with that astral current that is, in reality, flowing 
past him. 

The response made by the astral body to the 
pulsations of these wave-beats on the material 
Earth form sympathetic vibration from the one 
to the other, and transfer this sensation of travelling 
from the rushing astral current to the astral body ; 
and these vibrations will repeat themselves in 
waves of wider and wider extent, as the arc of 
influence is extended out from the point of 
departure. 

The reflex action on the body of the seer con- 
tinues recurring with rhythmic motion, as of the 
rise and fall of a tide, till the consciousness is 
carried out on those waves, although nothing 
but the consciousness is really affected. 



DEVELOPMENT OF MEDIUMSHIP 187 

Persons who have felt the magnetic vibrations 
pass through a platform on which they were 
standing, will know the sensation of movement 
where, in reality, there was none. 

The visions are carried past the seer, as the 
panorama of the sky and the stars is carried past 
the disc of a stationary telescope ; and no vision 
remains, however eager the seer is to stay in the 
scenes he finds so beautiful, or with the friends 
he is so glad to meet again. 

Sometimes, where the vision is very clear and 
the thought body of the seer is strongly developed 
into independent powers, it will go out as a separate 
personality, thrown onto the astral screen by the 
eager desire to be with the friends seen there, and 
appear as a reflection that is part of the scene 
enacting, and the seer will behold himself as if 
walking, talking, conveying his thoughts, and 
sharing in the lives of friends once more 

This form of projection of the mentality is akin to 
shouting words with the voice that the air carries to 
the point of focus, and repeats again as an echo, 
while the actual mechanism that produced the voice 
is still where its owner rests, it may be in bed, or 
other place of repose and in the mixed conscious- 
ness of the mental ego, and only the astral body is 
affiliated to the wonder world of the astral mirror. 

There are certain tests that can be applied to 
the visions thus seen to give the key to their origin, 
and to show whether they are reflected messages 
from spirits, or merely a succession of film records 



188 PROBLEMS OF MEDIUMSHIP 

that are more or less meaningless and illusionary. 
The danger is that one true message obtained in 
this way will give the seer confidence in false ones 
that may follow it, and the mental methods of 
development that gave the key to this plane prove 
no safer than any other. It must be remembered 
the power can be used just as easily by spirits who 
are not good, and who desire to mislead. Such a 
spirit may first attract the attention of a seer, 
and induce him to focus his thoughts upon a picture 
that is animated by a spirit, and will respond to 
the thoughts of the seer. The deceiving spirit will 
then use the same machinery to create a mere 
illusionary appearance, probably of himself as he 
desires to be pictured in the mind of the seer, or 
he may use the power to convey most false 
impressions of Spirit life, and give very dan- 
gerous teachings which he desires the student to 
follow. 

A still greater danger exists, for, if one of the 
great master minds among the old, old astral 
spirits has gained control of the line of projection, 
a tie will be formed, from the focussing of the 
mentality upon the projected appearance of the 
' Master," that will open the door to control of the 
mind of the seer at all times when the spirit 
chooses to use his power. 

There are also a great many so-called Masters 
on the occult planes. These are dominant men 
who lived long ago, but still possess Earth bodies 
of great age and miraculous stage of preservation. 



DEVELOPMENT OF MEDIUMSHIP 189 

and call themselves Masters, but these are really 
deputies from the real " Masters/' who are none 
other than the Serpent-men. 

The great age of the wonderfully-preserved 
bodies of the Earth stage, which these deputy 
Masters wear, ought to be proof enough of the 
origin of their knowledge and power, for only the 
serpent mind could devise the process by w T hich 
those bodies of the Earth have been preserved 
so far beyond the normal span of man's allotted 
stage of materiality existence. 

It must be remembered that none of the Astral 
spirits attached to Earth now are desirable con- 
trols, because all came from the lower polarity 
of that era, the higher Astral spirits having passed 
away from our planet. 

It has been stated that the visions seen on the 
astral mirror can be controlled by spirits who can 
use the physical element as the shutter of a camera 
is used, the veil of matter being dropped over 
the vision that is shown on the astral mirror 
and reflected on to the aura of the seer, thus pre- 
venting a second image from being received and 
blurring the first one. 

It is, in effect, the veil that the Spirit guide 
withdraws to allow T a picture to be seen, and 
allows to fall again when he considers enough has 
been shown. 

If the veil of the Physical Element, which is 
really in the aura of the seer and one of its magnetic 
constituents, has been thinned and diluted with 



190 PROBLEMS OF MEDIUMSHIP 

astral fluids to such an extent that the whole 
personality of the seer has become a transparent 
and involuntary receiver of impressions from all 
sources, this power of shutting off undesired 
pictures ceases, there being insufficient physical 
magnetism present in the aura. When this is so 
crowds of images of all sorts of things will be 
imprinted automatically with the coming of night, 
and the waves of astral fluids ; and even by day 
thought impressions will be received in endless 
sequence by the brain that has lost its physical 
protection. 

. The wealth of visions thus seen, or merely 
" sensed," is highly injurious in its effects on the 
brain and the body, and has too often impressed 
the seer with such a consciousness of " power " 
that it is almost idle to try to persuade him that 
such visioning is of the nature of luxuriant weeds, 
and is simply defrauding the spirit ego of its vital 
essence — of which it has only a limited supply, 
it must be remembered — in order to give objectivity 
to this parasitic host of images reproduced from the 
astral mirror. 

When a wise teacher finds a pupil with this 
abnormal faculty for all sorts of visionings on that 
astral plane, he will direct all the vital forces away 
from that practice, and use them on the material 
plane, and for normal occupations. After this is 
satisfactorily accomplished, and the seer is as 
nearly normal as is possible to him, the teacher 
will then try cautiously to bring the visioning 



DEVELOPMENT OF MEDIUMSHIP 191 

power up through matter into the true spiritual 
power of sight. 

This cannot always be done, however, and 
when that is found to be the case it is better that 
the seer should not use the faculty at all, but 
allow it to wither away as a weed the preservation 
of which ties the soul to the astral plane and 
increases the over-development of the astral body 
such a condition indicates. 

There are cases where the whole development of 
the psychic powers has been, in some past or present 
era, so purely of an artificial, parasitic character 
that nothing normal or useful can be obtained by 
the aid of any other process, and the best interests 
of the student himself are served if he is induced to 
abandon all attempts at psychic study. The only 
effects ever obtained in such cases by continuance 
of spurious development is to put the subject into 
affinity with the mirror of illusions, and make of 
him or her a super-vampire, because the true 
spirit sight belongs to the spirit body, and cannot 
be artificially developed. It is an attribute of 
certain races and a certain stage of ripeness in the 
spirit ego. The only thing that will and does 
respond to artificial culture and the desires of the 
mind is the astral body, and its powers of affiliating 
to the astral plane and receiving impressions from it. 

Persons who have affiliated themselves to the 
astral mirror may be very easily deceived, because 
their own minds will cast reflections on that mirror, 
and the results will be given back as actualities. 



192 PROBLEMS OF MEDIUMSHIP 

Sometimes their thought creations will be 
returned to them surrounded by a number of 
other thought creations from other minds, and 
mixed with pictures of realities that were already 
stamped upon the sensitised surface in hopeless 
confusion. 

Thus a man who believes in reincarnation, and 
has much interest in, say, the Crusaders, may see 
himself in his thought body as one of them. The 
concentration of his thoughts upon that period 
serving to bring that film before his mind's eye, 
and the projection the reflection of his thought 
body on to the astral mirror surrounds it with that 
scenery. So with many other occasions, when the 
scenery, being there as a background, serves to 
give confirmation to the illusion that the individual 
belongs to that era, or did so once. So onwards 
through epoch after epoch as the astral films 
drift past. 

Perhaps the scenes are not even historical, but 
merely the records of stories written in connection 
with these periods by minds that were sufficiently- 
dominant to leave their mental creations as pictures. 
All the great writers of every age leave the records 
of their mental conceptions imprinted on the astral 
films as part of man's legacies from the Astral 
Element. There is no end to the visioning 
possibilities of that form of clairvoyance, that 
means clear sight in the astral vehicle, when put 
into affiliation to the recording films of the mental 
planes that are reproduced in this astral mirror, 



DEVELOPMENT OF MEDIUMSHIP 193 

some of which are realities and many that are 
illusions. 

Is it to be wondered that courses for the develop- 
ment of psychics on the lines of mental clairvoyance, 
and through exercises directed to the union of 
mind and the astral planes, result in so much 
confusion and error ; half the self-styled teachers 
being only students themselves, often, indeed, 
pupils of fallacious schools of Oriental occultism, 
the whole power of which lie in their abnormal 
ability to put the student directly on the astral 
planes. Need anyone be surprised that so many 
catastrophies occur and so little real progress has 
been made. 

Misleading systems of psychic culture are 
continually being launched upon the world by 
persons, whose only claim to teach is overweening 
self-confidence and such information concerning 
the psychic conditions as can be picked up from the 
study of the records of old, often secret, occult 
societies : all of which brought about their own 
downfall by reason of the practices they indulged 
in that were simply pathways to the Elemental 
Planes. 

Spiritualists have been far too ready to resort 
to this means of acquiring knowledge, and too 
impatient to follow out their own and, at first, new 
line of exploration. It is not the principles of 
Spiritualism that are at fault in this relation, but the 
constant importation of teachings that never belonged 
to the plain purpose of its founders, and the grafting 



194 PROBLEMS OF MEDIUMSHIP 

on to the spiritualistic root of many seeds of ancient 
errors and the weeds of past misconceptions. 

It must again be reiterated that, while only a 
limited number of persons are sufficiently ripe as 
spirits to hold communion with the Spirit World of 
realities, an immense number have affinities to 
the Elemental-astral Plane. It is not desirable 
that these persons should cultivate that affinity, 
because it indicates that they are reincarnations 
from its conditions. They will do well to enquire 
why that affinity exists, for if it is a legacy from 
some pre-incarnation, dimly remembered, their 
present Earth life has been given to them to break 
those ties, and not to rivet the links more closely 
by a return into those conditions. 

The old occult societies that derived their 
knowledge from the Eastern schools, and which 
literally honeycombed the civilisations of the past, 
some of which have survived to very recent times, 
were fruitful in producing persons who could learn 
to float and swim in the astral current, and fly in 
the finer ether, and project their astral forms 
with the conscious egos in them all over the Earth ; 
and thus enjoy all those pleasures of the senses 
and intercourse with other persons in their astral 
bodies that gave so sweet a consciousness of power 
and freedom from the hampering body of the 
flesh. Not all were witches and wizards ; many 
motives besides evil desires caused sensitive persons 
—born of families in which the descent from those 
semi-astral spirits gave by heredity a power of 



DEVELOPMENT OF MEDIUMSHIP 195 

functioning in the astral body- — to wish to use 
those powers and lift the veil between the two stages 
of existence : the idea that they were thereby 
developing their spirits would give assurance of 
high motives in thus experimenting. Again, the 
course of meditation and solitude, and the develop- 
ments that were prescribed for the mystics would 
all produce the same result of placing the subject 
in affinity with the astral plane, unless in those 
rare cases where a truly ripe spirit was present in 
the mortal body. 

A great many of those unfortunate persons who 
enjoyed the pleasures of entering the conditions 
of the astral plane, or who merely became able 
to '" vision " the things belonging to it, would 
simply lose themselves and become absorbed, 
their individuality destroyed and the power of 
return into the Earth form lost, so that premature 
death, while the spirit was totally unfit to pass into 
the Spirit Spheres, would be the fate of these poor 
foolish persons. The unripe spirit, unable to break 
the toughened husk of the astral body, would be 
carried down in a semi-conscious state into those 
slumber lands of the astral elements, where they 
would lie as if buried till there was a sufficient 
recovery in the spirit seed to germinate again in a 
fresh form of Earth. 

The dim horror that haunts some people with a 
sense of being buried alive is a surviving memory 
from this condition and ought to serve as a warning. 

There is nothing dreadful in Mother Earth, 



196 PROBLEMS OF MEDIUMSHIP 

and such a soul would not be in the grave with the 
Earth body but in one of those semi-material 
regions where the souls, like the seeds of the plants, 
lie as in a garden of sleep. 

The sense of imprisonment, however, is there, 
just as with a paralytic body that has no power of 
motion. Long intervals of oblivion mercifully 
intervene ; but, even so, that fate should surely 
not be voluntarily encountered again. 

The Elemental Plane offers a very wonderful 
subject for study of its conditions, and some of those 
spirits who had been in it would possess a natural 
power of visioning those conditions in consequence 
of having literally germinated in them like a plant. 

Such an extreme experience would, however, be 
very abnormal, the majority of persons only possess- 
ing very limited powers of entering on that plane. 

In normal evolution consciousness should begin 
above that stage, and never be submerged in it. 

It should hardly be necessary to say that in the 
case of sensitive psychic children, who show 
evidence of clairvoyance, or any other form of 
mediumship, every care should be taken to prevent 
the development of such powers, at least till 
maturity shows of what nature they are ; but too 
many persons are so ignorant of all the conditions 
on that astral plane that they imagine the exhibition 
of such psychic " gifts " indicates the child is like 
the infant Samuel, set apart for some high destiny, 
whereas it too often happens such children are 
simply negative sensitives, with abnormal affinities 



DEVELOPMENT OF MEDIUMSHIP 197 

to the astral plane, that result in obsessions and 
not in great powers. 

Personal vanity and religious fervour often go 
hand in hand ; lack of logic may accompany them, 
for faith is apt to exclude the criticisms of cold 
reason, and refuse to be hampered by questionings 
and doubts. Given a psychic person, conscious 
from childhood of those vague powers of super- 
normal receptiveness, with limited intellectual 
training, an emotional and enthusiastic tempera- 
ment, and an overweening confidence in a great 
destiny and high guides, the person who can see 
and hear, and well-nigh live in the conditions of the 
Elemental-astral Plane, may be forgiven for regard- 
ing each new step on the way back to full powers in 
the astral body and each added exhibition of 
phenomenal demonstrations of that power, as a 
clear proof that the right course is being pursued, 
until it is too late to turn back again. 

All this time the "guides " may be simply pro- 
tectors, who are trying in vain to arrest the progress, 
and to break off the controlling influence of spirits 
who are not wise nor" high," but merely ignorant 
and conceited, even if well intentioned ; and of yet 
other spirits who are prompting, suggesting, helping 
on the abnormal development from motives that 
are purely selfish and evil. That boundless and 
dangerous plane has an infinite variety of influences, 
all working their " wills " on its conditions. 

All who cultivate the artistic faculties are 
peculiarly liable to find the way to the astral plane, 



198 PROBLEMS OF MEDIUMSHIP 

for true art always has affiliation to the mystic 
side of life. Art is suggestion of much that is 
sensed but not seen, nebulous and half formed and 
of the nature of wider " possibilities " that may or 
may not evolve into realities. Art is always 
semi-mysterious, and a striving after that w r hich 
is beyond and above the present accomplishment ; 
but art that is to live and become a power for 
future inspirations must be as that of the great 
masters, whose compositions live for all time 
because their authors were true creators, not mere 
visionaries. They embodied in material forms the 
inspirations of their art, transferring them from the 
elemental stage to that of the complete unit, giving 
them birth into matter ; and in doing so they took 
their conceptions from the astral condition, in 
which all mental creations are a species of parasite 
living on the brain of their creators until they are 
given objective form in matter. 

It is a matter of common knowledge that myriads 
of thoughts — creations thrown off by the minds of 
authors, artists, religious enthusiasts, philosophers, 
scientists, any and every person who thinks deeply 
enough to become a creator of thought forms — 
drift about on the astral plane, and become objective 
there if they do not find their legitimate con- 
summation in material expression. These thought 
forms do a great deal to confuse the sensitives who 
develop clairvoyance on the mental planes in an 
erratic fashion. 

Too many creations of mere dreams and visions 



DEVELOPMENT OF MEDIUMSHIP 199 

on that plane result in great exhaustion of brain 
power : for constant mental creation uses up the 
vital essence in endowing these fictitious present- 
ments with life, and thus destroys the balance of 
development in all phases of the individuality 
that ought to progress equally. 

Mere " visioning " is a mistake ; the vision is 
merely the foreshadow of what may become a 
reality. If it is not allowed to do so, it becomes an 
obsession in nine cases out of ten. The result 
is the same, whether it be the mystic in a convent cell 
or on a desert plain, whose visions are all of the 
most ecstatic character, or those of an inventor, 
a scientist, an artist, a philosopher, or the ordinary 
individual. Each person may even become haunted 
and oppressed by his mental creations, if he allows 
them to grow on the astral plane by dwelling on 
them in place of working out even the most 
imperfect of material reproductions in which to 
embody these mental offspring. 

The very activity on the material plane that is 
required to give them expression there serves to 
check their astral development and to transfer 
the vital forces to matter as the focus. It requires 
a material effort to paint a picture, write out the 
score of a composition in music, or transcribe a 
book, or sketch in the details of an invention, or 
to act a character in a drama. The effort to do so 
breaks up the crystallising condition of the astral 
elements that gather round the meditating passive 
mind as round a magnet, and scatters them. 



200 PROBLEMS OF MEDIUMSHIP 

The subjects of creation on the astral plane and 
of thought forms require a volume alone, and only 
a general warning against the dangers of doing 
anything of the kind as a mental exercise or in 
connection with psychic development can be given 
here. Under all circumstances, it is highly danger- 
ous, and never beneficial, because all mental 
creations on that plane produce parasites. The 
astral element, being merely the medium for 
transferring the thing created from the mental to 
the object condition, and thus transferring it from 
the stage of an elemental to that of a distinct unit, 
has nothing of its own with which to complete the 
process of creation apart from the physical element. 
The process of creation is arrested at the embryo 
stage, if it does not pass from the astral plane, and 
all embryo life is parasitic — dependent on its 
creator's life. 

The school of occultism that teaches pupils 
how to create on the astral plane from a mental 
conception to the conditions of a semi-materialised 
object — flowers, plants, a piece of drapery, other 
small objects — is either under the direction of a 
very ignorant occultist, or has received its in- 
spirations from a serpent mind, for nothing could 
be more fruitful in evil results than such a course 
of instruction, whereby myriads of parasites are 
created by the students, and left to prey upon 
anyone to whose brains these monstrosities can 
attach themselves. If we could see the auras of 
such students, we would find that the most successful 



DEVELOPMENT OF MEDIUMSHIP 201 

of them were clustered round with the animated 
parasites they had so ignorantly built up, and 
which, like the animalculae in a globe of water, 
were gyrating round and round inside the students' 
aura, like moths dancing in a sunbeam, and absorb- 
ing the vital essence in it, till they became like the 
collections of a rag shop. 

The whole of which astral entities go to form 
focus points for the astral ether, and again act as 
little weights to attach the spirit ego, to whom they 
belong, to the astral plane. Could anything be 
more injurious to the spirit ? 

The exceeding ease with which an artistic temper- 
ament can be put en rapport with the astral plane, 
the immense increase of power which that plane 
appears to bring to the imaginative faculties, is 
very misleading, because, while it suggests added 
powers, it is, in reality, only the stimulation into 
abnormal activity of the existing power, and the 
increase of productiveness only exhausts the supply 
the sooner. 

The mental faculties stimulated into abnormal 
activity by the exhilarating effects of the astral 
fluids soon become exhausted, and it is then that 
the astral body begins to waken up into abnormal 
activity and display its latent powers in response 
to the mental craving for a supply of mental 
essence. 

That is the beginning of the career of a parasite. 
It may not go very far, for many astral bodies are 
only capable of limited development, and the 



202 PROBLEMS OF MEDIUMSHIP 

busy lives of material existences do not give enough 
pause for that consolidation of the astral powers 
that would develop that body into complete 
activity. 

On the other hand, the process may go on very 
far indeed, till the individual becomes a veritable 
vampire, exhausting every one and robbing all 
who have any mental power to give. 

The cure is again material activity in place of 
mental productiveness. It may, however, be that 
the case has gone beyond possibility of cure, and 
the individual is on the way to imprisonment on 
the astral plane, when death shalt come and 
separate the material body from its over-developed 
astral partner. 

A true creator on the mental planes has no need 
of the astral stimulants of that plane ; the astral 
fluids will be simply a mirror to reflect to himself 
his creations, not to multiply them and thus 
imprison them on that plane. 

So with the true mystic. So long as no abnormal 
development takes place the visions seen in the 
astral light will be no more than reflections from 
realities that are evolving into spirit existence : 
for the true mystic is a ripe soul possessed of the 
true soul sight, not merely of astral power of 
visioning nebulous things, and can behold the 
vision in any media without losing his or her 
individuality in that media, or becoming submerged 
in the intermediate conditions. 

The true mystic sees with the eyes of the soul 



DEVELOPMENT OF MEDIUMSHIP 203 

(or spirit sight) the things that are conceived in the 
spirit, and not yet upon the plane of positive 
expression in any element ; hears with the spirit 
ear sound-waves that are not yet vibrating through 
the inferior elements. It is spiritual consciousness 
in excelsis that constitutes the true mystic, and is 
therefore a rare gift, for there are ten thousand seers 
who can sense and hear and see the things that are 
on the Earth plane and the astral plane for one 
true mystic who perceives the things that are 
purely of the Spirit. The world is not yet ripe 
for the production of the true mystic, because the 
world is still in the polarity of the lower soul, and 
man on Earth only finds union for his body of the 
Earth and his spirit of the true Spirit World through 
the agency of the astral body. All things in the 
astral condition still serve as the media in which 
matter and spirit interchange consciousness. 

The astral element has had its day of power ; 
it is in the process of going back into the sub- 
ordinate condition as the physical element ether- 
ealises and advances to its hour of supremacy. 
Both will retire finally into the subordinate con- 
dition again when pure Spirit reigns on Earth over 
all things evolved into spirituality. 

When that day comes man will be able to exercise 
all those powers he desires so ardently now. That 
day, however, comes to each individual soul as it 
passes into the higher realms of Spirit life, and 
will come to all as a collective whole when their 
era of evolution is completed. The process of 



204 PROBLEMS OF MEDIUMSHIP 

attainment is not hastened by going back to pick 
up again all those threads of ancient wisdom that 
were broken when the era of that astral power 
passed away to give place to the dawn of a new age 
of physical achievements. 

Everything pertaining to the astral power is 
withering ; everything pertaining to the physical 
power is developing and etherealising. Why, then, 
should man go back in order to study the records 
of a wisdom called from a power that is vanishing ? 



CHAPTER XIII 

VIBRATION IN ITS RELATIONS TO THE GREY LAND 
AND THE KINGDOM OF THE SERPENT-MEN 

For the sake of all those persons who are so eagerly 
accepting the teachings of the Oriental masters 
to-day, and also for the people of the East them- 
selves, it would be well that this problem of the 
Elemental-astral Plane, and the reality of the 
existence of these Serpent-men as its rulers, with 
the crowning heights of that plane as the grey 
land of the astral element should be considered ; 
not merely regarded as a curious freak of the 
imagination but studied in the light which past 
histories of the old occult religions and the eras 
of the witchcraft power, together with the writings 
of the magicians who studied that plane, can throw 
upon its conditions of existence. 

It will be a benefit, instead of merely a catas- 
trophe if the invasion of the West by the old 
occultisms of the East results in a wider, broader 
study of the whole question of an unseen Universe 
and its conditions of life, its laws governing the 
evolution of man's higher self, and the consequences 
to mankind of his inter-relation to that vast 
unseen realm are better known. Still more beneficial 
will it be if a flood of light can be thrown upon the 
inner mysteries of those old, old forms of religious 
teachings that are trying to find proselytes all over 
the Earth to-day. 

205 



206 PROBLEMS OF MEDIUMSHIP 

The very atmosphere of unrest that is in the 
East to-day is partly caused by the efforts that the 
soul of the Orient is making to cast off the fetters 
of ages of caste prejudices and religious enslave- 
ment. 

Every race has a right to evolve its own systems 
of religious or philosophic thought ; to establish its 
own social and family customs ; to make and 
administer its own laws within its own boundaries 
and so long as that religion and those customs 
affect only its own citizens. But when, as now, the 
citizens of one nation come as teachers to other 
lands, it becomes a matter of common right to 
challenge them. This is true, whether it is Christians 
spreading the light of their Scriptures over the 
Earth or Orientals doing the same with theirs. 

God has not denied the light of truth to one 
people and given it to another, but some have 
allowed their light to become dim and obscured 
by the inclusion of many falsehoods, which, by 
being incorporated with the truths in a religion, 
make it more dangerous than anything wholly 
false could be. It is in this sense that the sins of 
the fathers are visited upon their children, gener- 
ation after generation, if veneration for the fathers 
prevents the children from questioning the nature 
of the wisdom and the religious systems bequeathed 
by their progenitors. 

It is for this reason that men and women to-day 
must ask themselves not only what is the truth 
and the value in these teachings of the old religions 



VIBRATION 207 

that are being offered to them in a revived and 
adapted form, but what legacy shall we leave to the 
generations that are to come after us if we accept 
a particular religion or occultism as true and fit to 
be our guide, and if we follow out the formulas 
for development of our psychic nature that they 
offer us. 

To understand the source and the purpose of the 
diffusion of that class of wisdom that can and will 
produce these experts of the elemental plane, one 
must look again at the Serpent-men, and at their 
realm that lies between the faint light of the Grey 
Land and the iron door that gives entrance to their 
inner kingdom. 

From the faint crescent light to the iron door there 
is seen to be a very fine thread. In the blackness 
of that vacuum it scintillates like a line of light. 
It is the Thread of Life to which the Serpent-men 
have attached themselves as to a rope. The dark 
door is like a sieve through which the fine threads of 
light pass, drawing up the vital essence, and, in 
passing into the vacuum, twine themselves into a 
rope of three strands. 

The secret of the art by which that rope of life 
for the Serpent-men is woven is in the mysteries 
of vibration. 

As the great pendulum of the Earth swings to 
and fro from right to left, with gentle swaying 
motion, in response to the pulse-beats of the Earth 
magnet, the rope of the Serpent-men swings with 
it into the lower polarity and out again ; into the 



208 PROBLEMS OF MEDIUMSHIP 

higher polarity and out again ; gathering from both 
the life essences, and drawing them up through the 
fine network of that mystic iron door. 

Higher polarity, lower polarity, alternately, 
gathering lives from both conditions, and drawing 
their essence into the astral cone as the net swings 
to and fro, and all the root fibres of those floating 
islands on the higher astral plane reach out and out 
long, greedy suckers to drink in the vital fluids 
distilled by the Earth. Out into the sweeping 
currents of the astral waves nightly those suckers 
go ; their fine network expanding enormously, 
and at night look not only as floating islands of 
flowers but metamorphose into a hundred illusive 
appearances. 

When students are taught to u vibrate in 
unison/' and, as they imagine, " in tune with the 
great heart of Mother Nature," it would be well if 
they could see this nightly vision and its daily 
counterpart, and realise that there may be more 
than the one conventional aspect to the subject 
of vibration ; an aspect the Orientals, in all 
probability do not see, because their minds are filled 
with the delusion that vibration gives a path to 
power, and is the key to psychic development. 

On the astral plane we see the net of the Serpent- 
men swinging to and fro in response to the vibrations 
set in motion from the Earth by those students who 
are " vibrating " there, and far out on the edge of 
the Ocean of Chaos we see the same pulsing motions 
on a vast scale : the pulse of the Universe beating 



VIBRATION 209 

response to the magnetic attraction and repulsion 
of the nightly creative forces of the lower nature 
realm. It is this great pendulum of creation to 
which all are attuned, and to which the Serpent- 
men desire to attune as many persons as possible, 
so that they may vibrate with themselves and act 
as magnets to absorb and radiate those magnetic 
forces of the world — those lower nature forces — 
that are thus drawn into the Lotus Land. 

Perhaps some persons will understand why 
vibration frequently arouses the lower nature 
forces in those who practise it, and thus reawakens 
the half of man which is derived from the lower 
realm, and throbs its response from one plane to 
another plane of mere sensation, and gives that 
extraordinary awakening of the animal nature and 
its cravings. 

God did not give such teachings as vibration in 
unison with the lower polarity. 

The countless millions who have passed to Spirit 
life in Western lands never heard of " vibration/' 
never practised any formulas for development, 
yet they reached the Spirit Land of realities ; 
while those who followed that illusive path have 
only found their Lotus Lands, and the Elemental 
Plane has been peopled by a thousand times ten 
thousand more who could not reach those grey 
shadow-lands. 

From time immemorial that has been the fate of 
those followers of the religions into which the 
teachings of the Serpent wisdom have been grafted. 



210 PROBLEMS OF MEDIUMSHIP 

Always is there stamped upon those teachings 
the sign-manual of the Serpent-men. The Serpent 
is present somewhere in it all. Sometimes as 
twined round the central figure ; sometimes worn 
as part of the clothing of those who follow that 
wisdom. In Egypt it was seen continually. In 
the East to-day it is no less prominent, and wherever 
it is seen it should be recognised as stamping the 
hall-mark of its origin upon those who use it and 
the teachings they endorse. It is like the pirate 
flag of the psychic oceans, and ought not to require 
further description to make it a -danger-signal 
than the first introduction in the Book of Genesis, 
where its true aspect is shown by the tempter of 
mankind — the Serpent in Eden. 

The Serpent is challenging the world to-day, 
strong in the power over men's minds that the 
control of the elements can give to an expert 
occultist. Its votaries are willing to unite with 
any religion or philosophy, any scheme of life or 
system of occult propaganda, that will admit 
them to affiliation, because they know that union 
with them means absorption by them ; and that 
they can easily poison at its very source any teach- 
ing that conflicts with their own once they win the 
confidence of the public. 

In those old mystic religions, that are being 
made the fountain just now for the distribution of 
pernicious teachings, their keeping, as sacred truths 
that may not be analysed or revised, all the dogmas 
and mystic doctrines of bygone ages, renders it 



VIBRATION 21 1 

a very difficult task to say exactly where and 
when the seeds of the Serpent wisdom were 
introduced to poison the whole. 

Is it not then far wiser to leave the whole Oriental 
teachings alone, and follow the plain, clear school 
of Western thought, even if it has none, or only 
some, of those mystic beauties of symbolism in 
which the East is so rich ? 

As for the associations inspired by the Serpent 
line, is it not easy to understand how every one w T ho 
joins them contributes something towards keeping 
the Serpent-men supplied with an inexhaustible 
source of life. The lower polarities and all the nature 
realm being drawn upon by one set of " students" ; 
the higher polarities and the domain of the mind 
being sapped by another type ; while the great 
mass of followers, from the enthusiasts to the merely 
curious and interested, all unite in forming that 
great company that brings with it power of numbers, 
power of wealth, power of attracting ever more and 
more members. 

The old, old religions of the past that followed 
the illusive light on to that astral plane all perished 
in corruption ; so will those that have incorporated 
it now. The shores of life are strewn with the 
wreckage in human lives, and the lost spirits of 
many lands who were engulfed in the maelstrom of 
its hidden mysteries. 

Against those who are born into an old faith, 
and have their past or present ties to it, there can 
be no criticism directed ; but for those born in a 



212 PROBLEMS OF MEDIUMSHIP 

newer age, and with the light of freedom always 
before their eyes, it would surely be a wilful blind- 
ness that would cause them to ignore the warnings 
that have already come to deter the foolish and 
unwary. 

In nine cases out of ten, those who accept these 
occult teachings to-day do so inspired by an idea of 
the power that lies behind it all, a share of which 
may be possessed by themselves by uniting with 
those who control it. Many are allured by the 
prospect of escape from the dead level of material 
existence into the imagined higher conditions of 
some spiritual plane. 

By the time these persons discover their mistake, 
and the complicated variety of evil things that lie 
behind the apparent ideality and truth, it is too 
late to escape from the toils — the net holds mind 
and body fast. 

Fortunately for some there is never any great 
power of entering the elemental planes during life, 
but even for these, who are only as triflers on the 
fringe of the danger zone, affiliation will involve 
their future freedom, and prevent them from 
passing into the true Spirit World at death. 

Many unhappy spirits have tried to come back 
and warn those in the flesh, but it is difficult to 
make the world heed and realise the danger. 
Though one rose from the dead, the living will 
scarcely listen. Even to many broad-minded 
persons, the passionate appeals that emanate 
from the unhappy spirits, inspiring preachers and 



VIBRATION 213 

teachers to speak for them, seem as the outpouring 
of fanatics or neurotic pessimists, and few recognise 
that the error of entangling ourselves while we 
are on Earth with this network of the Serpent-men 
may result in ages of imprisonment on the elemental 
planes and the loss of those whom we love but 
whom the automatic routine of evolution into 
spirituality carries on while the poor entangled 
souls are left behind : never forgotten, but tied 
so that love and anguish, and many prayers 
cannot serve to release them ; and weary ages of 
separation become the lot of those who are thus 
parted. 

Do we need to wonder that to-day so many 
spirits return to try to lift the veil and show the 
truth ? 

It is, indeed, desirable to learn all that the 
clairvoyants can show of the results derived from 
the following out of the old religions, and what 
independent testimony the fresh minds of the West 
can glean concerning the psychic conditions created 
in their own lands by these Orientals, who are come 
to spread their teachings everywhere. 



CHAPTER XIV. 

WHAT CLAIRVOYANCE SHOWS OF THE PSYCHIC 

ASPECTS OF THE EAST I ELEMENTAL TYPES 

CREATED BY MAN 

ABNORMAL EVOLUTION AND ITS RESULTS IN THE 

EAST 

To the materialist who visits the East, and especially 
those regions in which the old occult religions have 
dominated for ages, there is a curious veil of 
mystery over the countries and the peoples ; a 
something that the materialist cannot define, but 
which can be sensed, even through the insensitive 
shield of the physical element that so completely 
envelops a materialist ; and when we are told that 
" East is East and West is West/' and never can 
they unite satisfactorily, expression is given to 
that vague, indefinite consciousness both of the 
mystery of the East and its fundamental inharmony 
to the line of evolution that has been followed by 
the West. 

Astrologers express this inharmony by saying 
such and such persons are " square " to each other : 
that is, magnetically in opposition. 

The psychic who visits those regions is either 
magnetically and mentally attracted by the sensed, 
but imperfectly seen, conditions of great power on 
the mystic planes that belong by evolution to the 
people of those regions ; or if the clairvoyance is 

214 



PSYCHIC ASPECTS OF THE EAST 215 

strong on the spiritual plane, and also on the astral, 
a sense of fear and repulsion will be experienced, 
and grow in intensity as the spirit of the seer, who 
is of another race, and has no affinity to these 
regions, becomes more and more conscious of the 
true nature of the power that has been developed, 
and of that mysterious hypnotic influence that 
pervades the whole atmosphere for the psychic. 

The effect on a Western psychic of this type is 
first this sense of mystery, and the veiling of all 
clairvoyant powers as by a heavy fog. Then a 
consciousness of inharmony to the conditions, 
and fear born of that inharmony. 

Gradually the inharmony is conquered, power 
of visioning begins to manifest itself again, and 
the spirit side becomes visible. 

With very highly sensitive mediums the total 
inharmony of conditions produces illness. If 
there is little physical envelopment the spirit 
will suffer acutely, and where the parasitic con- 
ditions are strongly prevalent the sensitive Western 
psychic, who has not the artificially developed 
astral envelope of an Oriental, very soon begins 
to fade away and dies if not removed to more 
suitable conditions. 

In other cases the ego may become acclimatised 
and affiliate to the conditions, but in doing so will 
inevitably develop the astral body — just as the 
natives have done — and from that time will 
gradually lose the power of true spiritual sight, 
and see through the medium of the astral body 



216 PROBLEMS OF MEDIUMSHIP 

and on the astral plane, instead of on the spiritual 
planes. 

This has been the history of scores of Western 
psychics, who during the past eras became absorbed 
by the Oriental schools of occultism, and even so 
far affiliated to their magnetic conditions that they 
returned to Earth from the Elemental Plane to 
reincarnate among Oriental races : having, in 
fact, lost their own type and their natural line of 
evolution and wandered into another. 

The idea of " caste " is founded on the knowledge 
of the importance of preserving type, in a pure, 
unmixed condition, because all mixtures tend to 
return the ego to the Elemental Plane, to find 
there again a definite type. 

With the Jews the constant injunctions as to 
the preservation of race purity was intended as 
a means of preserving also their own definite line 
of evolution, and their means of communication 
with the spirits of that line. 

The same law applies to all lines of psychic 
development that are to be clear, definite, and 
reliable, because unmixed in their conditions. 
After the Elemental Plane is left behind, the spirit 
may seek fellowship where it desires, because 
it has become positive, fixed in type, and thus 
no longer in danger of submersion or absorption 
again in the elemental conditions it ought to have 
left behind. 

If the psychic is strong individually, and can 
resist the powerful mental atmosphere around him, 



PSYCHIC ASPECTS OF THE EAST 217 

and can separate the impression and the visions 
seen, so that he can tell which are merely thoughts 
crystallised in the astral ether into actualities for 
the moment, and which are true spiritualised 
visions of things non-existent in his own aura 
but of the spirit itself, he will be able to study the 
conditions which the course of development fol- 
lowed in the East for ages upon ages has produced 
in the immediate surroundings of the Earth in 
those regions. 

The Western psychic, with no hereditary vener- 
ation for any school of thought, no predisposition 
in favour of any line of religious teachings to 
colour and distort the character of the visions seen, 
will behold those Oriental lands, and that part of 
the astral plane that is affiliated to them, as a very 
different picture from the first glimpses seen through 
the haze of impressions thrown off by many minds 
in many ages. 

The first consciousness the Western seer has is 
of a thick aura, instead of a clear, slightly brown 
or grey vapour. The next is a sense of being 
surrounded by myriad creatures of all types up 
to men and women in their astral bodies ; even 
animals of curious mixed types are seen that are 
evidently parasitic creatures, many of them quite 
horrible types, of voracious character, that are 
tearing each other to pieces, and devouring one 
another continually, as one may see animalcule 
in water do. Even the animal life of the East has 
shared in the effects of the too close intercourse 



218 PROBLEMS OF MEDIUMSHIP 

on the Astral-elemental Planes of man and the 
soul of lower nature, and the results are soulless 
abortions belonging to neither type. 

Elemental life ought to end in the animalculae 
— that is, all that belongs to the material evolution. 
It is when matter forms a link with the elemental- 
astral types that those weird shapes between so 
many incongruous beings are created. 

Plants, animals, fish, birds, men, mixed in 
inextricable confusion, are seen on that plane. 

It is, nevertheless, only where human lives that 
have assumed matter have given it off again in 
an elemental state that these semi-human types 
of elementals are seen ; the humanised elements, 
being discarded in a state below that of the embryo, 
would amalgamate with the elementals of the 
nature world on that astral plane. 

The other classes of elementals simply fuse 
together and absorb each other, and are absorbed 
again by some higher type in the ascending scale. 
These other strange creatures may be seen literally 
devouring each other as cannibals, and preying on 
anything they can obtain. These are the most 
rapacious class of all elementals that can be 
imagined. 

These are the results of perversions of the 
creative powers, especially of attempts to divert 
those powers onto the astral plane as a means of 
avoiding the material and natural results of creative 
functioning in the material body. That which 
fails to achieve material expression, even as 



PSYCHIC ASPECTS OF THE EAST 219 

an embryo, becomes an elemental of the type of its 
creators, and in the likeness of the impulse that 
gave it being. 

Among vegetarian races the creations on the 
elemental plane show affinity to types of plants 
and men combined ; while among carnivorous 
people they resemble animals and men. They go 
back, in effect, to their source of origin in the 
nature world, but retain the semblance of the 
higher type that created them. 

In Europe, in districts where witchcraft flourished, 
clouds of these elemental beings were created, 
and might be seen hanging round people in the 
flesh, and living on them as parasites. In reviving 
practices that affiliate to the witchcraft eras and 
join immorality to occultism men are creating 
once more crowds of these abortions. 

There are other classes of elementals that are 
also the creations of man and that elemental plane 
in unison, and these may be seen very numerously 
in the East to-day, because a great deal of inter- 
course with that plane is practised from many 
motives, and also in connection with some of their 
religious rites. 

These many types may be seen by clairvoyants. 
Some as resembling men and trees, rooted in the 
soil, with long tendril roots, like feet with feelers 
extending as toes ; long gnarled limbs, that resemble 
arms and hands with long outstretched fingers, that 
reach out and twine round the passer-by with almost 
human responsiveness. Others are as tall reeds in 



220 PROBLEMS OF MEDIUMSHIP 

marsh lands, fantastic things, neither plants nor 
people, but as one sees them in a nightmare when 
wandering on the astral plane of those Eastern 
lands. 

And there are weird creatures that can walk 
on the Earth, or hop, or crawl over it. Some that 
can swim on the astral fluids or fly in the air. 
Almost every type is represented, with strange 
combinations that belong to none ; and all these 
creatures show a horrible responsiveness to the 
presence of mortals, clustering round a sensitive 
like a swarm of noisome insects. 

There are also a class of creatures that are purely 
vampires, and that may be seen drifting round a 
graveyard and hovering over the graves, as do the 
ghouls also. These absorb the inferior vital essence 
that is evaporating from the dead bodies ; and, as 
they absorb it, they may be seen to swell up into 
bulbs — big transparent forms that drink in the 
vital fluids, and then are in turn suddenly absorbed 
by some strong vampire that comes drifting there 
in search of its nightly supply, or by yet another 
class of vampire that is derived from some mortal 
whose corpse lies buried in the grave. 

All these weird phases of elemental life may be 
seen. A thunderstorm will kill these elementals in 
crowds, and electricity is a useful agent in destroying 
them. They will, however, multiply again from 
the causes that originally created their types 
through the intercourse of man with Elemental- 
astral Plane. 



PSYCHIC ASPECTS OF THE EAST 221 

These things are not links in the chain of evolu- 
tion at all. They are not a necessary part of the 
evolution of the human body. It is an error to 
classify them as part of normal evolution, because 
they are an artificial product — the abnormal results 
of unnatural lives. 

The other types of elemental beings belong to a 
table of ascent, it is true, but they end in the 
animalculae that do not produce a human type. 

A type is produced from a mould, and varies 
according to the circumstances that have created 
that mould. A type does not exist till the elemental 
stage is passed, and then that mould remains to 
produce repetitions of the type till the exhaustion 
of the mould — or root form — causes that type to 
become extinct. 

The human type in the elementals comes from 
men themselves in a process of going back to the 
nature form — devolution, not evolution. Such 
elementals are all soulless ; no human ego is either 
coming up through them or going back again in 
any one of them. 

There is a class of vampires, however, who have 
souls, but these are always attached to some 
person in the flesh, and prey upon the public 
when they wander over the Earth in their astral 
bodies. 

The formative stage of all created things being 
the Earth and its elemental region, that plane 
expresses all the imperfect examples of creative 
power, and all the perversions of the laws of sex. 



222 PROBLEMS OF MEDIUMSHIP 

From that stage onwards through Spirit life the 
sex organism develops in conditions that no longer 
require expression in the elemental stage. Nothing 
is eliminated, but all is developed into higher 
expression of power. 

Constant interference with the laws of nature, 
that pertain to that elemental plane and man's 
relations to it, are responsible for the myriad of 
abortions seen as elementals ; and to destroy or 
blight and wither an organism is not to develop 
it into a higher expression of power. The attempt 
to nullify the sex functions simply arrests the 
process of true evolution, and keeps the individual 
ego, as the subject of arrested development, on 
the elemental plane, and in its conditions in a 
rudimentary and imperfect stage of powers. 

It cannot be too clearly emphasised that man on 
Earth has in all his organisms the first conditions 
of spiritual powers and the mechanism for the 
development of his spiritual body. Nothing will 
be left behind as discarded, but all will be spiritu- 
alised in its expression of power, and translated 
into ever more and more spiritualised expression — 
the sex organism as certainly as any other attribute 
of the human race. 

To pervert or to destroy the creative powers is 
to imprison the ego on the Elemental-astral Plane. 
The constant interference with nature, and the 
laws of nature, that all the occult religions have been 
guilty of, explains why and how so many fine 
mentalities are found among the spirits of the Orient 



PSYCHIC ASPECTS OF THE EAST 223 

imprisoned on that elemental plane, and in all 
conditions from those of the grossness created by 
persons of evil desires to the ethereal and pure state 
of that beautiful but deadly realm of the Grey Land. 

From all time the East has kept unbroken the 
multiple lines of psychic culture that lead through 
the elemental plane, instead of that single line 
which passes over it. That line belongs to the 
Jewish people primarily, and to all those tribes 
who derive origin from the Jewish primogenitors 
back to the days of the Flood of Noah's era. 

The East has made a sacred dogma of the means 
whereby communion may be held first through 
that plane, and then, as they believe, with the 
heaven lands ; but, as the investigations of Western 
seers would indicate, that belief is erroneous, 
because their methods do not carry them above the 
elemental planes, but only into the highest astral 
region of it. 

The Eastern schools have perfected their methods 
of absorption from nature upwards on every plane, 
and all they have done, or can do, is to make of 
whole races and great continents vast storehouses 
of the astral-elemental magnetism ; great distilling 
vats for the supply of the essences of the nature 
realm alone ; mighty focus-points for every variety 
of weird and awful creatures evolved on that 
plane, and between its conditions and the material 
Earth's. 

The reproduction of the same results have 
followed, in a modified form, in Western lands, 



224 PROBLEMS OF MEDIUMSHIP 

when the same formulas are practised, the same 
teachings adopted. 

In their mediums and their mystics they possess 
very marvellous exponents of the power that is 
derived from the elements ; and their temples have 
become the haunts of Earth-bound spirits, imbued 
with the old errors that have led to their imprison- 
ment. Spirits these are who can give no new light, 
but who do connect the worshippers with all sorts 
of beings that haunt the temples and similar focus- 
points for attracting human magnetism and men's 
thoughts. 

These earth-bound spirits in their astral- 
elemental bodies complete the chain that connects 
man with the lower polarities. 

The astral-elemental magnetism has been gener- 
ated for ages round these places till the whole 
aura of the East is saturated with it, and 
phenomenal exhibitions of power are simple affairs ; 
and the attendant consequences of these conditions 
can be felt by almost any really sensitive Western 
psychic. 

In the hill countries there is some relief, and 
among Orientals who do not follow the line of 
development that embodies the Lotus flower and 
the Serpent in its symbols, but as a general effect 
this peculiar atmosphere pervades the whole 
Orient, and is especially dominant among those 
religions that have made a science of the methods 
of vibration, thought creation, deep breathing, 
and so on. 



PSYCHIC ASPECTS OF THE EAST 225 

In those regions the aura resembles a grey fog, 
with brown tones through it, and is lit up by the 
strange ghostly astral light that is reflected onto 
that aura from the Grey Land. 

To watch clairvoyantly the Astral-elemental 
Plane is like trying to study the phantasmaform 
of a nightmare dream ; so many of the things that 
drift by are so much of the elements that it is 
difficult to realise they were once men in the flesh. 

Those dull, almost-black bodies that resemble 
huge slugs, with a little dry form in the centre of 
each, like a pea in a mass of dark sponge — these 
were low-caste fakirs once, and these dark forms 
are their carefully developed astral bodies. Do 
mediums wish to develop similar prisons on the 
astral plane ? 

Those weird phantoms that are definite in form, 
but transparent as glass, were created ages ago 
between the early races of men and astral spirits 
of the elements of a low type of mentality. Their 
bodies are almost indestructible ; they are so 
purely of the astral line of evolution, and are little 
more than petrified thought creations. 

Then there are aerial forms, some dark grey, 
others light in tone, and some pure white. All so 
tall, so very, very tall, so attenuated, so ethereal, 
they look like smoke wreaths seen in the moonlight. 
These pass with incredible swiftness ; almost as 
thought flies. They are psychics, who have 
etherealised their higher astral forms into these 
lightest of " sheaths/' Some of them are still 



226 PROBLEMS OF MEDIUMSHIP 

attached to Earth bodies ; while others have passed 
away from their mortal forms. 

These are the experts on the astral plane, who 
go to and fro at will, and their ethereal forms are 
what they have developed in place of the true spirit 
body. They are chained to the astral planes, but 
do not realise it while such power of flight is 
theirs. 

They are quite ready to be the guides and 
instructors of anyone who desires their help. To 
affiliate to any of these means the loss of the normal 
chance, possessed by every one, of going to the 
spirit planes, and involves the risk of becoming 
chained as these psychic experts are, and to them. 

There are likewise to be seen huge bloated figures, 
like great balloons, with a thing the size of a pea 
and resembling the human form inside. These 
come drifting past on the astral currents. Some of 
them resemble snake skins inflated ; and, while 
they can float on the astral waves, they cannot 
rise into an upright position when left on the 
Earth, but trail themselves along, and turn and 
twist and wriggle as the serpents they resemble 
would do. 

These latter elemental-astral beings were once 
men who sold themselves, body and soul, for power 
on Earth, and on the elemental planes by all of those 
occult avenues to dominion over other men's 
minds that affiliation to the Serpent brings, and 
thus they have their reward. 

There are likewise multitudes of the earth-bound 



PSYCHIC ASPECTS OF THE EAST 227 

spirits, such as may be seen in all countries where 
men have lived — east or west, north or south. 

And there are many beautiful and fantastic 
types of semi-astral spirits to be seen by those who 
possess the clairvoyance of the true astral planes. 
Beings that never were, and never will be, in the 
mortal form are seen forming a " border regiment " 
between the earth-bound spirits and those types 
that are merely elemental. 

These carry up the line of evolution on that plane, 
and link mortals and elementals, and those long 
chains of lives that constitute the spirits who are 
travelling up the long spirals to the Grey Land. 

Seen from the Earth the tall cone of that 
mysterious land looks like the snow-capped peak 
of an ethereal mountain, crowned with a halo of 
beautiful light. Yet from it there blows a chill 
wind as from a land of death. 

Below the peak lies the Lotus Land, with its 
wonderful panorama of tropical luxuriance and 
myriad illusions. 

Well may the seer be allured by the beauty of 
that higher astral plane, and by all its pictures of 
great souls who once lived on Earth, and left the 
imprint of their lives and of their personalities as 
images of perfect types, that are mirrored on the 
astral film as on a record, and shown by the exquisite 
rays of the astral light thrown down from the 
mystic land. 

And yet it is not well to see these things. The 
power to do so comes from affiliation to the 



228 PROBLEMS OF MEDIUMSHIP 

Elemental-astral Plane, and shows that the seer 
has developed the astral body. To see this land 
too vividly is to lose the power to see the true 
Spirit Spheres, for man in Earth life has not such 
spiritual power as would supply both astral and 
spirit form at the same time, and because affiliation 
is dangerous. 

To see this beautiful aspect of the Astral- 
elemental Plane is so alluring that the clairvoyant 
is apt to lose sight of the other side of the picture 
and that realm near the Earth that is repulsive. 
That nearer zone, even with all its repulsive 
aspects, is not so fatal a region to become entangled 
with, because, while to do so will chain the soul 
there, it will not be for such an eternity. 

The law of destruction reigns on the lower plane : 
that is in the denser elemental region. That law 
brings release to the imprisoned soul the more 
swiftly the less there is of the pure astral fluids 
in the reconstructed elemental body ; and the 
dissolving character of the formative zone of the 
elemental plane brings death to the elemental- 
astral forms there in automatic sequence. 

If the ego has by occult arts constructed an iron 
box for his spirit, so that the disintegrating process 
cannot take effect, there may be long ages of 
residence on that plane, but only while, as a vam- 
pire, it is able to renew the elements by absorption 
of more as fast as they are dissolved. 

Old European cities have in their day created 
astral-elemental conditions that are existent still 



PSYCHIC ASPECTS OF THE EAST 229 

and detrimental to the community, but there is 
this much less of a danger in that the development 
on psychic lines uniting men in and out of the body 
of the flesh and a host of psychic and astral entities 
has not been made a science or a part of the religions, 
except at the witchcraft periods and of recent years. 
Only a limited number of persons have ever studied 
the occult planes in Europe ; myriads have done 
so in the East. 

The coming of large companies of Orientals to 
the West brings the conditions of their races with 
them, and forms in a new country a fresh focus 
for those unseen crowds of earth-bound and 
ancient spirits who follow their countrymen ; 
and brings also the elementals of their types, 
besides forming congenial points of focus for similar 
entities belonging to the Western races. 

It is a dim consciousness of these things, and 
also the experience of unpleasant " happenings " 
following in the wake of the Orientals, that creates 
a certain degree of prejudice against them. The 
importation of those exhausting conditions, that 
create a craving for stimulants and find relief in 
drugs, mark the coming of large numbers of psychic 
Orientals, and the establishment of their schools of 
occult development. 

Ordinary drunkenness is not common, for alcohol 
does not give the super-stimulation to the powers 
of the elemental body that drugs give ; nor those 
periods of illusionment that are due to the subtle 
envelopment of mind and body in the influences to 



230 PROBLEMS OF MEDIUMSHIP 

which drugs open the door ; thus putting the per- 
sonality onto that Astral-elemental Plane when 
ordinary methods fail, because there is not sufficient 
response in the astral body till drugs are taken. 
Drugs act where hypnotic methods fail, because 
drugs are one degree nearer to the material stage. 

It is this subtle evolution of an elemental-astral 
aura of great power following in the wake of the 
Oriental teachers that makes of the places where 
they establish their power strong points of attrac- 
tion for all kinds of elemental-astral beings, and 
for the radiation of unseen, but not unfelt, power 
on the occult planes, and the influence of those old 
religions, with their hosts of semi-astral spirits 
that belong to their line of evolution now. 

It is the unseen subtle influences that belong to 
the elemental plane that are daily and hourly 
absorbed when men are brought in contact with 
these depots. The spiritual essence is never 
radiated by the soul ; it is only the mental influence 
that acts on other minds to create agreeable impressions, 
while the soothing, semi-narcotic drug — that is 
in the magnetism of that nature world reservoir 
of the Earth — gives the sense of rest and peace 
that is so welcome to tired mentalities. The 
beautiful peace of the " influence " radiated is 
narcotic. It soothes and dulls the mind ; as it 
soothes, the intellectual faculties offer less and less 
resistance to the gradual domination of mind and 
body that follows. 
The stronger individualities resist the absorbing 



PSYCHIC ASPECTS OF THE EAST 231 

influence longest, sometimes altogether repudiate it, 
but the weaker, who are the more highly sensitive, 
soon become submerged ; their very constitutions 
changing under the influence of that subtle mag- 
netic drug, till, where there was little affinity to 
the astral planes shown at first, the gradual soaking 
in of the subtle astral-elemental ether produces 
an astral body that can be put into affiliation to all 
that region near the Earth and on it. 

The thinning away of the physical element 
exposes the spirit more and more, and allows of the 
attachment of crowds of astral creatures, and 
brings many other dangers in its train that were 
non-existent at first. 

There are a great many reasons, besides racial 
prejudices and commercial jealousies, that cause 
people of one race to exert a repelling influence 
towards another and diametrically opposite, one. 

The millennium, when all shall unite in harmony, 
cannot arrive till all are out of the lower polarity 
that controls all now, and the laws of the lower 
polarity place barriers between races to prevent 
them fusing their types and losing their in- 
dividualities in the very dissolving conditions of the 
elemental plane. 

Men of the Western races have no special claim 
to plume themselves upon their moral status ; 
too often their advent in a strange land has meant 
the importation of their vices, as well as the 
amenities of their country ; but so long as men do 
not add the aggravated horrors of a redevelopment 



232 PROBLEMS OF MEDIUMSHIP 

of the astral body to their evil actions, there is, as 
a rule, the termination that Death brings to the 
multiplication of the evils. Where the occult 
practices are added to any imported evils, the end 
cannot be foreseen. 

The Hindus are active just now in their exploi- 
tation of the occult wisdom they have gathered 
through the ages. In common with others, they 
may be said to have colonised the Elemental- 
astral Plane, both in its lower and its higher 
regions ; and to have so united its conditions in 
their own auras and that of their country that there 
is an unbroken line of evolution through it possible 
for a Hindu, and the condition of repeated re- 
incarnations from it ; but, while the air of superior 
wisdom and the vast storehouse of occult knowledge 
of that plane that these men do possess is a guar- 
antee of their power to manipulate the forces of 
that plane, the results they have obtained in 
consequence of their knowledge do not justify an 
unlimited confidence in either the character of 
their knowledge, nor in their power of controlling 
those forces ; nor are their spiiitual powers found 
to be of any superior order, when once the veil of 
mystery is stripped from the history of the results 
of the teachings of the Oriental Masters. 



CHAPTER XV 

THE RELATION OF THE ELEMENTAL-ASTRAL PLANE 
TO MEDIUMSHIP TO-DAY 

THE POSSIBILITIES OF GREATER INTERCOURSE WITH 
SPIRIT LIFE IN THE NEAR FUTURE 

Mediumship that opens the door on to the 
Elemental-astral Plane is far more often met with 
than the true mediumship that has no affinity 
to that condition of discarnate existence. 

Wherefore, it is of the utmost importance to all 
mediumistic persons, as well as to the world at 
large, that the true nature of that plane be widely 
known and the character of the powers it gives 
recognised. 

It is well to state here that there are many 
spiritualists — some of them very fine mediums — 
to whom only the bright and beneficent aspect of 
psychic powers ever presents itself ; and for these 
persons no words of warning are necessary, since 
no danger finds any intermediate link of connection ; 
not because they are more moral or more highly 
spiritualised than others to whom mediumship 
brings constant dangers. Many of them are by no 
means so very spiritualised, nor are they developed 
on to a high plane ; their safety is due to absence 
of magnetic affinities to the Elemental-astral 
Plane, and to nothing else. 

233 



234 PROBLEMS OF MEDIUMSHIP 

Between man in the body of the flesh and that 
danger zone there is the barrier of that realm 
around the Earth that may be said to enfold it 
with a blanket of protection, and is known as the 
region of the earth-bound spirits. The constant 
radiation of very physical elements that goes on in 
this region serves to make a condition too dense for 
the elemental-astral beings and spirits who have 
been drawn into its conditions, to pass. Thus it 
prevents their encroachment upon the Earth life, 
and so long as man leaves this barrier intact, it is 
only the earth-bound spirits recently from the 
life of Earth who can enter into affiliation with him. 
This region is* like the threshold of the two con- 
ditions of semi-material and semi-astral existence. 

Mediums may connect themselves with this 
semi-material zone, and find protection in their 
material bodies while they hold clairvoyant, 
clairaudient, or inspirational communion with the 
good spirits in an earth-bound condition. They 
may even make use of the nature-forces in slightly 
finer condition on the Earth region on that plane ; 
may receive raps ; see etherealised forms of visions 
reflected onto the Earth plane, but not material- 
isations of forms,, nor any phenomena that involve 
manipulation of the elements — metamorphoses of 
any kind. No attempts to pass the barrier of the 
Earth plane can be made by mediums with safety. 
All metamorphosis of the elements, all building up of 
forms, as with materialisations, means affiliation of 
medium and circle to the conditions of the elemental 



ELEMENTAL PLANE AND MEDIUMSHIP 235 

stage of evolution and the astral element, that plays 
so important a part in the process. It involves the 
use of the elemental-astral body that is man's 
heritage from the astral era, and brings dangers 
that will be shown in the next book, where the 
nature and constitution of the astral body is 
described in carefully detailed analysis. There are 
so many persons who cannot arrest the develop- 
ment of their astral bodies once they are stimulated 
into activity that it is dangerous to begin the 
process. 

It is because of the exceeding danger there is of 
being unwittingly drawn across the barrier of the 
Earth plane, and affiliated to the danger zone, that 
wise and good spirits in all ages have discouraged 
all mediumistic development by the general public, 
and that the importance of developing good 
mediums on safe lines is a recognised necessity 
in order that the true nature of mediumship may 
be taught by good spirits possessed of real know- 
ledge. The guides of the first " Spiritualists' ' 
Association, knowing this, carefully selected as 
their first mediums persons who, owing to their 
strong physical anchorage, could not be developed 
to cross that barrier. It is for that reason that all 
phenomena that require the affiliation of that 
plane are discouraged by the higher and wiser 
spirits. It is not because there are no mediums 
to-day who could give repetitions of the phenomena 
of the early days that it is so seldom given now, but 
because the true nature of that class of phenomena 



236 PROBLEMS OF MEDIUMSHIP 

and its dangers has been demonstrated by the 
wiser spirits, and is better understood both on 
Earth and in the Earth plane regions, and few 
spirits will join in promoting it. 

In the Spirit Spheres it is known that a new era 
of communication is coming for the Earth's peoples, 
just as such eras have come in past ages. Those 
good spirits, who desire to give knowledge that 
will prepare mankind to use wisely and well the 
power such communion will bring, have endeavoured 
to organise mediumship, and to open up their own 
avenues for controlling the communications in 
order to prevent the evil line of the Serpent-men, 
and all those many associations that are affiliated 
to them, from usurping all control. In past ages 
that usurpation of power has again and again 
taken place, and produced the witchcraft eras, 
instead of periods of advancement in spiritual 
knowledge and power. The doors that the Churches 
shut were opened and held by evil Intelligences 
time after time. 

If the same result is not to be repeated in the 
coming era, the true nature of mediumship must 
be better understood and the mediums protected. 
Mediumship has existed in all ages, it will exist 
eternally. If the Churches refuse to recognise it, 
and to give their protection to those who are the 
mediums, there must be a neutral association to 
give this protection, and the means of studying 
the whole question involved ; otherwise the power 
must always be left in the hands of spirits and 



ELEMENTAL PLANE AND MEDIUMSHIP 237 

mortals who are too often influenced by ambition, 
selfishness, base, or even by actually evil motives, 
as in the witchcraft lines of development. 

Mediumship is not a necessary part of any 
religion, although it serves to illuminate or mislead 
the religious seers and mystics according to the 
influences that control it. 

Mediumship is due to certain peculiarities in 
individuals, and to certain conditions in the 
nature realm that correspond to these peculiarities. 
What affiliation to a religious body can do is to 
draw around the mediums the protecting mantle 
that purity and truth, as possessed in a true and 
uncorrupted faith, can give ; or, on the reverse, 
such affiliation to religions that are themselves 
corrupted or false, or are in themselves affiliated 
to the Elemental-astral Plane, will give, not pro- 
tection to the mediums, but a fatal and almost 
hopeless entanglement in the same network of 
corrupting influences. 

Hence it is actually safer to join no religious 
body of persons than to find union with a false 
system, a corrupted faith. 

Spiritualism began as a neutral association ; 
the earliest Spiritualists were social martyrs to their 
opinions and outcasts from their churches ; subject 
to merciless criticism and ridicule. They were 
largely recruited from the ranks of the freethinkers 
and persons on the borderlands of many schools of 
thought. This attitude opened the door to almost 
any line of control, and it is not to be wondered 



238 PROBLEMS OF MEDIUMSHIP 

that almost every line of thought in spirit life 
found some exponent. 

In those early days of modern Spiritualism, 
many spirits and many persons in the flesh were 
very eager for any knowledge that could be given 
them. The majority of persons in the flesh were 
totally ignorant of the laws of spirit communion, 
and the spirits on the Earth plane were equally 
ignorant of any conditions but their own ; they 
do not now see that astral plane except as a Shadow 
Land. 

Spirits and mortals were alike anxious to com- 
municate, and eager for instruction. There was 
any amount of ancient lore, and strange forms of 
power that could be demonstrated ; and spirits 
who had been past-masters in controlling those 
powers found ready acceptance of their suggestions 
and their control. Good and evil contended 
continually, and the spiritualistic movement re- 
flected the dominance of the one or of the other. 

It was at this time that many Oriental spirits 
on the Earth plane, and in that wonderland of the 
elemental-astral region, came forward to impress 
both the spirits of Western races, who were also 
only on the Earth plane, and many persons in 
the flesh, with their knowledge of the possibilities 
of phenomenal demonstrations of power and of 
the philosophies that have illuminated past eras, 
and with teachings of universal truths that belong 
to no age and no people. 

Some of these spirits came to warn against the 



ELEMENTAL PLANE AND MEDIUMSHIP 239 

errors that still imprisoned themselves, but too 
many, unfortunately, did not realise they were 
prisoners in the Elemental-astral Plane, but were 
still inflated with pride in the powers they possessed 
on it, and were eager to teach their knowledge to 
others. Still others of the spirits who came were 
actually evil and very dangerous because of their 
superior knowledge. For, whereas an earth-bound 
spirit may obsess and cause much evil and degra- 
dation to his medium, he cannot bring upon his 
victims the super-evils that result from knowledge 
that links man with the semi-material and 
semi-astral beings who live beyond the earth-bound 
region, and are actually shut away by it till men 
themselves remove the barrier. 

It has taken a great deal of time to make mediums 
realise this danger, and even now few understand 
in what the danger consists. 

To all those persons who have welcomed the 
advent of the psychic movement as a means of 
lifting the veil that shrouds the other side of life, 
it will seem an unsatisfactory conclusion to say that 
an exhaustive study of the whole question leads to 
the conviction that free intercourse between the 
two stages of life cannot be possible yet ; that, in 
fact, the majority must resign themselves to receiv- 
ing messages of a limited character, such as might 
-come from friends who had gone to another 
continent. Every one desires direct personal com- 
munication, if possible ; and hence people grasp 
eagerly at all lines of development that promise 



240 PROBLEMS OF MEDIUMSHIP 

this ; but it would be false to the whole purpose 
of this book, in aiding the spirit friends to give a 
true picture of their conditions, and of the difficulties 
they require to surmount, to say that free and full 
communion can be safely obtained in the very near 
future. 

Sorrowing humanity may take comfort in the 
thought that a measure of such communion can be 
given now, and will be given in its fullness later 
on. Spirit friends who belong to intermediate lines, 
by descent from those mixed astral-physical races 
of the long ago, and who are on those intermediate 
planes that have been likened to the five semi-tones 
of the musical scale, have established ages ago 
what may be called sub-stations on the Elemental- 
astral Planes, and do help spirits from Earth, 
who have passed on beyond the Earth sphere to 
hold communion with those on Earth ; but, 
again, it must be remembered that this means for 
conveying messages is limited by the conditions of 
the planes on which these sub-stations are. 

Even as Moses was obliged to wait before he 
demanded the freedom of his race from their en- 
slavement to the Egyptians, till the Earth conditions 
were ripe for the wonders he required to show, 
and the power he would have to exercise, against 
Pharaoh and his wonder workers, so must we await 
the arrival of the right hour that will give the world 
free communion between both sides of life. 

Moses could see those periodic waves of magnetic 
force described already as emanating from the 



ELEMENTAL PLANE AND MEDIUMSHIP 241 

pillar of fire. He knew that one of these waves 
would be due to reach the Earth, just as an astro- 
loger predicts the advent of a comet. He knew that 
his hour of power on the physical plane would 
come with that physical magnetism in abundance. 
He knew that the Egyptians, with their power 
derived only from the astral element drawn from 
the Elemental-astral Plane, would (under a law 
of God that man may apply for his salvation) 
fail in face of a mighty wave of physical magnetism, 
such as he, Moses, the medium of the physical race 
of Adamite man, could attract and control ; and 
which they, because of their abnormal affiliation 
to the Elemental-astral Plane that was the secret 
of the Egyptian power, could not. 

Some of the Orientals try to claim Moses as their 
initiate, but the whole story of the Bible shows 
him as " learned in the wisdom of the Egyptians, 
but the direct opponent of their methods, and the 
antagonist of their powers.* 

Writers who try to explain by the light of present 
conditions how Moses overcame the hosts of Pharaoh 
find nothing but the theory of a Divine miracle to 
account for the story ; it does not occur to their 
minds to think that there were abnormal conditions 
present in the Earth itself at that exact time which 
made the miracle possible. 

Those tidal waves of magnetic ether have 

*In the next volume this question will be fully discussed, and 
the aspects of their teachings that clairvoyance can show will 
be eiven. 



242 PROBLEMS OF MEDIUMSHIP 

recurred periodically, and one is now due to reach 
our Earth before long. Already there is a fullness 
of psychic powers in the higher spheres, and our 
Earth has begun to show responsive vibrations ; 
and, as the little pools of water begin to fill and 
then overflow, and the sands to grow moist and 
quiver and glisten before the coming of the in- 
flowing waters of the tide really reaches them, so 
there are evidences that the wave has come close 
to the shores of our planet already. 

Many persons have an idea that the possibilities 
for the electric light and power of all kinds through 
electric force, " wireless " and kindred demon- 
strations of nature forces, have been with man 
from the beginning of creation, and only awaited 
the discovery of the instruments by which those 
forces could be regulated and their nature under- 
stood. That is an error, because the Earth now is 
in an exceedingly fine condition of etherealisation 
of its physical elements, and generates an aura of 
those elements that is different from the aura of 
the Earth in early ages, when the dominant note 
was first the astral influence, and next a condition 
of dense materiality, in which only phenomena of 
the elemental stage was possible. The present 
conditions of the Earth's aura have not existed 
from all time, but are the outcome of the Earth's 
evolution into a semi-spiritual planet ; even as 
man has evolved into a spiritual individuality 
on the Earth, and given it thereby a share in the 
heritage of that higher soul which man represents. 



ELEMENTAL PLANE AND MEDIUMSHIP 243 

Thus Earth and man progress together, and their 
united spirituality reacts upon the conditions 
around them, and gives the etherealisation of the 
elements from which the more subtle demon- 
strations of magnetic force become possible. The 
strong inflow from a magnetic wave finds receivers 
in both man and his Earth, and demonstrations 
become possible on whatever planes those receivers 
are in affinity to ; so that man will receive either 
great illumination of the truths and the beauties 
of spiritual existence : or colossal forms of evil 
and perversions of truth will spring into strong 
dominance over men's minds and bodies if the 
receivers of the magnetic power are in affinity 
to evil lives and to distortions of spiritual verities. 

In the early ages the Earth possessed an 
etherealisation of the astral elements that was 
bequeathed by the astral era. That was the media 
for the phenomena of that day ; the physical 
essences etherealised will be the media for phen- 
omena at last, and we are on the verge of the turn 
in the tide towards full physical power in our 
Earth's aura. 

This finer physical essence is rapidly becoming 
the vehicle for transmission of power all over 
the world, and presently its etherealisation will 
reach the point at which spiritual power of com- 
munion will be normally obtained through it, 
and will thus eliminate the necessity for mediums 
in the flesh for all but inspirational, clairaudient, 
and clairvoyant forms of communion. 



244 PROBLEMS OF MEDIUMSHIP 

Raps belong to the nature force, and require 
very little — sometimes no — addition from the 
human medium to make them available as a code 
of signals. The rappings and tappings in mines, 
where a variety of personalities have been present 
to investigate them, who could not all have been 
the mediums for the demonstrations, belong to the 
nature forces ; so do the healing influences found 
in certain grottoes and pools of water, where the 
fluids and the rocks serve to hold the magnetic 
essences and prevent too rapid evaporation, belong 
to this class of phenomena, for the magnetic force 
of the nature soul plays an important part in all 
miracles, recurring again and again in certain 
localities. 

Wise spirits know that phenomena through 
mediums cannot be obtained without putting them 
into affiliation with the Elemental-astral Plane, and 
that only in very exceptional cases can this be done 
safely. Hence these spirits do not encourage the 
quest for phenomena. 

On the other hand, spirits who are entirely 
indifferent to future consequences, or ignorant of 
them, or are of evil intent, can and do produce a 
variety of remarkable demonstrations. In the past 
these spirits in the background could manipulate the 
machinery for these demonstrations, and thereby 
captured the interest and adherence of perfectly 
good spirits on the Earth plane, who were very 
eager to demonstrate the truths of immortality 
and the survival of the individual ego. 



ELEMENTAL PLANE AND MEDIUMSHIP 245 

No one can calculate the extent of the evils 
produced by affiliation to the Elemental-astral 
Plane, nor the long catalogue of errors and disasters 
brought into Spiritualism by the attempt to return 
spirit entities into material conditions, in order to 
satisfy the sceptic, and demonstrate through matter 
the power and existence of the totally distinct element 
of spirit as the dominant factor in the evolution of 
a world. 

Man in the flesh should rise to the spiritual 
conditions. He cannot bring them down to his 
own level ; all he does is to put himself and his 
spirit friends into the elemental conditions of the 
Earth plane, with all the attendant evils. Only 
through the truly spiritualised senses can he hold 
communion with the Spirit Spheres directly, and 
the less of phenomena he entangles himself with, the 
nearer will he approximate to the true spiritual 
conditions. 

If man is to use mediums to connect him with the 
chain of intermediate spirits that extend to the 
Spirit Spheres, then the ripeness of the medium's 
own spirit, so that it is almost in possession of its 
future spiritualised faculties, becomes important. 
A ripe soul, that cannot be drawn into the conditions 
of the elemental plane, is the true type of medium. 

Many persons may fancy they answ T er this 
description, but experience proves that the truly 
ripe souls are rare, the majority being in an imperfect 
condition that makes it dangerous to develop the 
mediumship that is manifested. Furthermore, 



246 PROBLEMS OF MEDIUMSHIP 

there are persons who, owing to past development 
on to the Elemental-astral Plane in connection with 
the old occultisms and " secret cults " of the past, 
are ripe as regards their power upon that plane, 
and not ripe as spirits, and these persons are a 
twofold danger to themselves and to others the 
moment development of mediumship is attempted. 

The history of Spiritualism has proved this ; 
the study of the older occultisms has proved that 
over and over again their formulas for obtaining 
pow r er simply resulted in opening the door to the 
worst of evils and many dangers ; creating also a 
host of persons — spurious psychics — whose powers 
were merely vampirish and of no spiritual value 
whatever. 

In preparation for the coming inflow of magnetic 
power, the higher intelligences in the Spirit Spheres 
have been clearing away the entanglements of old 
errors, old evils, old effete teachings of ancient 
religions, philosophies, and science, that incor- 
porated methods of psychic development, or 
enunciated dogmatic theorisms. They have cleared 
away many misconceptions from all branches of 
knowledge, and are working still that the minds of 
men and women might be emancipated from 
enslavement to any old and fossilised examples of 
false or perverted knowledge, and the New Age 
be born into an atmosphere of freedom. 

The attempt to put the shackles of old faiths or 
old occultisms upon the minds of persons who are 
freeborn ought to be vigorously resisted, not 



ELEMENTAL PLANE AND MEDIUMSHIP 247 

placidly accepted : for freedom of thought, once 
lost, is hard to regain, and no tyranny is more 
oppressive than mental dominance by powerful 
minds. The opening of the door into another plane 
of communication should give to the newer type of 
Science pow r er to introduce new truths, and throw 7 
new light on old problems. 

Many spiritualists agree that spirit communion 
and its laws should be a matter for broad-minded 
scientists to elucidate, and that religion only 
becomes a part of the study when the communi- 
cations involve religious teachings. The science 
that is to give the key to the psychic planes must, 
indeed, be very broad in its scope, and free and 
unhampered by the traditions of material science 
and the limitations of material powers, yet it must 
make of material knowledge a starting-point for 
explorations into the wider realm of that which is 
unseen by the material sight. 

Man is expanding his material powers and 
mundane knowledge in all directions, and the 
Spirit World is labouring to meet him at the nearest 
available point of contact ; both will unite more 
surely and swiftly if man is not " side-tracked " 
into the entanglements of the old occultisms, with 
all their errors and false systems of development 
that were derived from no higher source of know- 
ledge than the inspirations of the Serpent-men r 
and the misguiding spirits of the Elemental-astral 
Plane. 

Western man is free-born. Should he then go 



248 PROBLEMS OF MEDIUMSHIP 

back, in order to enslave his mind, to the old 
occultisms, the old religious teachings and en- 
tanglements of that weird and mystic school of 
Eastern thought that has had so many repre- 
sentatives in past ages and in old faiths, and still 
survives in all its dangerous psychic possibilities 
to-day ? Surely no ! 



All that has been described so far in these pages 
is in the realm of the lower polarity and the nature 
soul. Man, with his higher soul, has a corre- 
spondence to every condition of the nature realm, 
and the effects of this correspondence, and the 
results, to mediumship in particular, of this inter- 
relation of man and his w T orld are such that every 
step of the separate ladders by which man and the 
nature realm ascend to the condition of spiritual 
entities becomes of absorbing importance, as 
tracing back to their origin the causes of the en- 
tanglements between the two, and their action and 
reaction on man's progress. In the next volume of 
this series, the subject of man's own share in 
producing the conditions of the elemental plane 
will be traced out, together with the further 
consequences that resulted to Adam's descendants 
from the sin of the Eden days, the problems that 
arise from mediumship in relation to the elemental- 
astral body, and all the avenues to the Elemental- 
astral Plane that are opened up by abnormal 
developments. 



ELEMENTAL PLANE AND MEDIUMSHIP 249 

True mediumship, that opens the gateway to 
the Spirit realms, is one thing, and a very beautiful 
thing ; the spurious mediumship that arises only 
through the vampire possibilities of the elemental 
body and its over development, with all the 
attendant evils, is quite another thing. In the 
sequel to this book the Problems of Mediumship will 
be considered again from the standpoint of the 
possibilities of that elemental body, and the con- 
sequences that specially arise from the teachings of 
the Oriental and other occult schools. 



The End. 



NOTE ON REINCARNATION. 

Man reincarnates only from the elemental plane. He may go 
to its highest regions, and still reincarnate from any stage of his 
development on that plane, because he is always in his astral 
body while in that plane, and never in a true spirit form. 

He may reincarnate from the lowest stage very soon, because 
that stage is nearest matter. The more he etherealises his astral 
body, the longer will he be before he can reincarnate ; and when 
he reaches the highest point of etherealisation, which is in the 
Grey Land, he will find that he cannot reincarnate at all. 

He has used up all his spiritual " oil of life " in etherealising 
his astral form, that is by that time so perfect in its powers 
within that plane, and has nothing left for the development of 
his spirit on any other. 

The astral body of a positive man will continue to exist as 
long as the world does ; but when the end of this Earth comes, 
that man and his astral body will perish with it, leaving the 
soul as a disembodied ego that has no power on any plane, and 
must begin its whole pilgrimage over again before it can possess 
power for objective expression in any element. 

A man may not reincarnate at all — it is not compulsory on 
anyone. A soul, born into the physical element and into an 
earth body, may pass straight into spirit life, and not linger in 
the environments of Earth at all. 

Even an infant that dies at birth, or a child who lives for a few 
years, may pass into spirit life, strange as this may sound, when 
it is admitted that mature men can reincarnate repeatedly. 

This difference in their line of evolution is because the full- 
grown man has made ties to the elemental plane, and the infant 
has made none. The elemental plane is not on the line of normal 
evolution from the moment in which matter is first assumed ; 
to re-enter it is going back a stage. The infant has not had an 
opportunity to go back, or to form abnormal ties. The spirit 
seed of the future body of the infant has not been developed , 



NOTE OX REINCARNATION— Continued. 

but neither have its powers of growth been diverted to the astral 
plane. The infant passes as an infant into spirit life, and grows 
up there from the stage at which Adam descended into dense 
matter. 

The full-grown man has wasted or misused his power of spiritual 
growth, and has to wait in the " anteroom " to spirit life until 
his spirit body recovers its independent, vital force again, and 
can grow as a spirit. 

In all reincarnation there must be the total destruction and 
dispersal of the elements of the material body, and of the astral 
envelope before the seeds of a new body can spring from the astral 
root ; just as all the blades of grass and all the leaves of a plant 
of one season die and drop away as the new plant rises from the 
bulb root. And still it is from the astral root the new form must 
evolve. 

There is always a period of complete negation, in which all 
activity is arrested, and a state of coma that precedes the return of 
the ego into a new body of the Earth. 

As a rule, reincarnation means that the former incarnation 
failed to ripen the spirit ego, or to give it the experience earth-life 
is destined to give, but there are persons who reincarnate, 
although they possess strong spirit forms, and are ripe in Earth 
experiences — highly-developed mentalities. 

These are men and women of strong passions, deep emotions, 
great capacity for good or for evil actions, and violent tempera- 
ments, to whom immersion in matter is a sedative, giving them 
again the opportunity to control those strong passions, deep 
affections, domineering characters, and to regulate their mani- 
festation without destroying the value to the development of 
the soul which the capacity for deep emotions give. 

Nothing is so acute, so intense, as the sufferings produced by 
vehement passions and overdeveloped emotional natures that 
are uncontrolled by the will-force ; nothing is so absolutely void 
of all sensation as matter, so utterly unresponsive to the mind. 
Matter is like a thick blanket deadening all that the mental ego 
can experience, and the stultifying, imprisoning effect of the un- 
responsive body of matter act as a check on the passionate soul, 
giving rest without negative conditions, and limiting its activities 



NOTE ON REINCARNATION— Continued. 

by imposing the restraint of matter upon the gratifying of every 
impulse. One has only to look upon a body of the flesh from which 
the soul is absent to realise how utterly expressionless and 
insensitive a thing mere matter is. 

It is as though the passionate soul has been returned to the 
imprisonment of the material form, and into the school of material 
life — the lower form again — in order to learn the lessons of self- 
restraint, not those of experiences of earthly existence. 

Reincarnation is not a normal, but an abnormal, process of 
evolution. 



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